The Kids are All Right: Casting Director Ronna Kress on Paper Towns

Casting director Ronna Kress has worked on everything from The Great Gatsby, to Mad Max: Fury Road and Terminator Genisys. Kress talks to The Credits about casting British supermodel Cara Delevingne in her breakout role as Margot in Paper Towns, which is based on the book of the same name by bestselling teen author John Green, and the most unusual place she’s discovered new talent.

Paper Towns Screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber

When I originally met screenwriter Michael Weber, he was doing publicity for a small-budget 2013 film entitled The Spectacular Now that he co-scripted with his writing partner, Scott Neustadter. That film, which had been languishing in development for years, went on to receive critical acclaim and helped shoot its two stars— Miles Teller and Shailene Woodley— into superstardom.

Weber and Neustadter earned raves for that successful adaption of Tim Tharp’s novel.

Rectify Creator Ray McKinnon on Teaching Aussies the Georgia Accent

On the Sundance TV drama Rectify, which airs it's third episode of it's third season this Thursday evening (at 10/9 C), Daniel Holden moves back to his tiny Georgia hometown after spending 19 years on Death Row for the murder of a local 16-year old girl. Contending with tense family members and suspicious locals, Daniel articulates a jumble of confused feelings in a lugubrious, utterly convincing southern drawl. His Georgia dialect sounds authentic but in fact,

Jane Anderson on her Moving HBO Doc Packed in a Trunk

Writer-director Jane Anderson’s career has spanned film, theater and television. She never planned to make a documentary, let alone figure so prominently in one. But for nearly half her life, Anderson, most recently Emmy-nominated for her adaptation of Olive Kitteridge for HBO, has yearned to bring the artwork and the story of her great-aunt, Edith Lake Wilkinson, to the public.

That has happened with Packed in a Trunk: The Lost Art of Edith Lake Wilkinson,

Jen Chaney Discusses Her Book “As If: The Oral History of Clueless

"Okay, so you’re probably going, 'Is this like a Noxzema commercial or what?' But seriously, I actually have a way normal life for a teenage girl." So said Cher (Alicia Silverstone), nearly 20-years ago to the day in writer/director Amy Heckerling's Clueless, which marks it's 20th anniversary this Sunday. Heckerling's film took it's inspiration from Jane Austen's "Emma" and transported it 180-years into the future and some 5,500 miles west to Los Angeles in the mid-90s.

Trainwreck Editor Loves Mistakes: ‘It Feels Real’

Some editors might look for the most perfectly delivered take to put in a movie. But not editor William Kerr, who took the lead editing Amy Schumer-led, Judd Apatow-directed comedy Trainwreck.

“I love dirty stuff,” Kerr said. “I love mistakes, little things that seem peculiar, because they seem like reality.”

The same could be said of the heroine of Universal’s Trainwreck –Schumer. She plays a commitment-phobe,

Comic-Con 2015: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies Director Burr Steers

Director Burr Steers (Igby Goes Down, 17 Again) said in an interview that his new film, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is about "the most repressed society you possibly could imagine and then bringing in the element of these agents of malicious chaos to bear. More so than early 1960’s America, where you had [George] Romero’s monsters as metaphors in those movies, challenging white hegemony. This culture is even more uptight.

Supergirl, Teachers, Impastor & More: TV Takes the Stage at Comic-Con

San Diego Comic-Con long ago transcended its origins as a couple of hundred fans swapping comic books and now covers every kind of entertainment. This is where content creators can reach the kind of passionate fans who don’t wait for anyone else to tell them what’s cool and love to spread the word about new movies, games, and TV shows. I always describe it as the Iowa Caucuses of pop culture.

So when TV Land wants to reboot its image as a place to find the series you watched as a kid and be seen as a place to go for contemporary and very NSFW new comedies,

Director David Thorpe on his Doc Do I Sound Gay?

Journalist David Thorpe never intended to become a filmmaker. Thorpe was getting his MFA in creative non-fiction with the idea to write a book about his anxiety over his voice, and more to the point, his anxieties over sounding "gay." But Thorpe realized that a book wouldn't do the topic justice, so he dropped out of the program and funneled the money he would have spent on his classes into what would become, four years later, his debut documentary 

Getting Edgy With Kill Bill Sword Choreographer Tetsuro Shimaguchi

I’m standing in a dimly lit bar located two floors below street level in the Shibuya district of Tokyo, while a man clad in black is rapidly approaching while swinging a Samurai sword directly towards my neck.

I’ve had interviews go better.

The weapon of note is being welded by expert swordsman Tetsuro Shimaguchi, best known for his featured role as Crazy 88’s “Miki”, the right-hand minion of Lucy Liu’s character O-Ren Ishi in Quentin Tarantino's 2003/2004 opus Kill Bill Vol.

Kill Bill’s Sword Choreographer Critiques 5 Iconic Star Wars Lightsaber Battles

Playwright Edward Bulwer-Lytton believed that “The pen is mighter than the sword.” back in 1839,  but if he’d stuck around to pick a fight with Tetsuro Shimaguchi, he might’ve have reconsidered that stance.

As the drumbeat of anticipation grows for the Dec. 18th release of J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens with the latest news about the film soon to be revealed at Comic-Con this Friday,

A Q&A With Sam Elliott, Whose Career, Like his Mustache, is as Strong as Ever

Veteran actor Sam Elliott, known for his impressive mustache and that velvet-in-gravel voice, at age 70 is experiencing a late-career resurgence.

Not only did he star in the final season of FX’s critically acclaimed series Justified (playing the clean-shaven Markham), Elliott was feted at this year’s Sundance Film Festival for three films: Digging for Fire, directed by Joe Swanberg; I’ll See You in My Dreams,

Writer/Director Patrick Brice on the Late Night Intimacies in The Overnight

Over the years, plenty of films have featured over-the-top parties that slowly spiral out of control, but there have been few movies like Patrick Brice’s new comedy The Overnight.

The film tells the story of two sets of parents who come together for a pizza party in a Los Angeles home. The couple played by Adam Scott and Taylor Schilling have recently moved to L.A. from Seattle and are looking for new friends in the neighborhood.

Modern Family Editor Tony Orcena on the Show’s Trickiest Episode

Tony Orcena has edited 32 episodes of Modern Family, but the one he gets asked about most was one of the most discussed comedy episodes of 2015. This was the episode that was filmed entirely on a variety of personal devices—phones, computers—as Claire, stuck at an airport, is desperately trying to track down Haley after an argument. "Connection Lost" was a first for television, and it couldn't have been possible with Orcena's editing skills.

Cutting Chaos With Homeland Editor Jordan Goldman

You may watch Homeland and assume the reason you're so riveted is the subject matter (international espionage), the performances (Claire Danes brilliant, bi-polar CIA operative Carrie Mathison, Mandy Patinkin's CIA chief Saul Berenson, etc.), and, of course, the relentless action. And you wouldn't be wrong. But what you might be missing is another key element that makes watching Homeland so intense: it's edited to put you, the viewer, in the character's shoes.

Maya Forbes on her Highly Personal, Illuminating Infinitely Polar Bear

Behind the scenes, writer/director/producer Maya Forbes has helped directors and filmmakers tell a lot of stories, but in her directorial debut Infinitely Polar Bear, she’s telling her own.

Her new drama chronicles the eighteen months that Forbes and her sister lived with their bipolar father in Boston in the 1970s while their mother attended graduate school in New York. Although that period was sometimes tumultuous, it also gave her a lot of beautiful memories about her dad—

Ex Machina Production Designer Mark Digby on Redefining Sci-Fi

Production designer Mark Digby has created believable worlds besieged by young clubbers and virus-mad zombies (24 Hour Party People and 28 Days Later), made the slums of Mumbai a riot of colors and textures (Slumdog Millionaire) and helped translate Kazuo Ishiguro’s haunting novel Never Let Me Go into a sumptuous film. For his last film, Digby turned the future into a believable,

Dana Nachman on the Phenomenon of her Doc Batkid Begins

When Miles Scott told the Make-A-Wish Foundation that he wanted to be “the real Batman” no one could have predicted how epically his dream would be fulfilled. The documentary Batkid Begins, which premiered at this year’s Slamdance Film Festival, goes back to November 15, 2013, when, with the help of the Mayor, the Chief of Police and thousands of volunteers, San Francisco became Gotham City, to the delight of a five-year-old boy battling leukemia.

Thomas Haden Church Talks War Dogs, More in Max

Here’s a little known fact about actor/director/writer Thomas Haden Church: Following memorable turns on television (Wings) and in film (Free Money), he stepped away from acting in late 2000 and left Los Angeles for his 2,000-acre cattle ranch in his native Texas. It was director Alexander Payne who lured him back to the screen with a plum part in 2004’s sleeper indie hit Sideways,

Feeling the Music of Fargo With Composer Jeff Russo

You would have been excused for wondering how in the world the folks behind FX's Fargo were going to take a classic Coen Brothers film and turn it into a viable television series. The challenge of adapting something beloved is hard enough when what you're adapting is a book, but to take an award winning and critically acclaimed film and turn it into a television series? That takes guts.

One of the ways in which