A Q&A With Maps to the Stars Screenwriter Bruce Wagner

Screenwriter Bruce Wagner knows Hollywood. At an early age, he witnessed the lives and lifestyles of the rich and famous firsthand. Growing up in Beverly Hills, he attended school with celebrities and later on, when he was working as a limousine driver, he drove countless members of the A-list around the city.

It’s no surprise then that Wagner enjoys writing about the Hollywood culture in novels like Force Majuer and Dead Stars and in screenplays like the one he wrote for Maps to the Stars.

Director Henry Corra on his Heartbreaking, Beautiful Farewell to Hollywood

When director Henry Corra met aspiring young filmmaker Regina Nicholson at a film festival, neither knew they would be embarking on a journey that would become literally about life and death.

The result of their collaboration is Farewell to Hollywood: The Life and Death of Reggie Nicholson, an intimate documentary that emerges as a powerful portrait of the spunky Nicholson as she goes through cancer treatment and estrangement from her parents to realizing her dream of making a personal,

Apollo Robbins Teaches Will Smith & Margot Robbie Art of Grifting in Focus

When Will Smith and Margot Robbie look credible picking pockets in Warner Brothers’ Focus, opening Friday, it’s due to detailed coaching behind the scenes from a man sometimes known as “The Gentleman Thief.” Apollo Robbins, a performer who once picked the pockets of President Jimmy Carter’s secret service escort, gets top billing as a consultant on the new film because writers/directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa (Crazy, Stupid, Love; I Love You Phillip Morris) brought him in at script level in 2011.

Director Niki Caro Finds her Place in McFarland, USA

Niki Caro is one of the more astute, thoughtful directors working today. Whether she’s adapting a novel about a peasant winemaker in 19th century France (A Heavenly Vintage, 2009), or fictionalizing the account of the first major successful sexual harassment case in the U.S. (North Country, 2005), Caro’s ability to get inside the lives of very different people and to contextualize their plights with just the right amount (and the exactly right kind) of detail is obvious to anyone who watches her films.

Oscar-Nominee Richard Linklater on Playing With Time in Boyhood

There are few filmmakers who have the dedication and patience of Richard Linklater. Boyhood proved that. For those of you who might just be emerging from a cinematic hibernation, here is what you missed; for twelve years, the writer/director returned to the same actors and script to chronicle the fictional story of a boy growing up in Texas. Little-known actor Ellar Coltrane was hired over a decade ago, at the age of six,

Oscar-Nominated Composer Jóhann Jóhannsson on The Theory of Everything

When we spoke with composer Jóhann Jóhannson, he had just returned from performing a few pieces from his Oscar-nominated score for The Theory of Everything in a video interview published by USA Today. He was famished (he hadn’t eaten all day) and he was no doubt tired (he’d flown from Los Angeles to New York the day before, and was off to London the following day for the BAFTA awards,

Oscar Nominees E. Max Frye and Dan Futterman on Writing Foxcatcher

Writing any screenplay based on an actual incident is a daunting task, what with staying true to your real characters and settings without compromising your narrative. And when your story is as stirring, disturbing and shocking as the one depicted in Foxcatcher—which explores the aberrant and ultimately deadly relationship between millionaire John du Pont and wrestlers and brothers Mark and Dave Schultz—the job to tell the tale in just 134 minutes is especially formidable.

Inherent Risk: Editor and Producer Mathilde Bonnefoy on Making Citizenfour

When documentarian Laura Poitras asked Edward Snowden why he had chosen her, out of all the potential people to disclose his information to, he replied, “I didn’t. You chose yourself.” At the time Snowden was writing to her as “citizen four,” and for months Poitras alone knew about his trove of information on the N.S.A.'s surveillance program.

Eventually, as we learn in Citizenfour, the Oscar-nominated documentary that culminated from her relationship with Snowden,

Berlinale 2015: Christian Bale & Natalie Portman Discuss Knight of Cups

Watching Terence Malick’s Knight of Cups, set in a glowing, static Los Angeles, was reminiscent of the summation of my father’s arguments against me going to college there — there’s just no there, there. Rick (Christian Bale), a peaking screenwriter, wondering how he arrived exactly where he wanted to be, wanders the city and the nearby desert, passing through condos and mansions and decadent fêtes. This metaphorical prince — he is such because the narration at the beginning of the movie tells us so —

Berlinale 2015: A Q&A With The Filmmakers & Star of Koza

A bleak, beautiful entry from Slovakia in the year’s Berlinale, Koza starts off slow and static and stays that way, even as worlds heap themselves on the titular main character. An uncommon blend of reality and fiction, the film stars the real life Koza, birth name Peter Baláž, more or less as himself. The Roma boxer competed in the 1996 Atlanta Olympic games for Slovakia, returned home, and over the ensuing years, slipped back into the chronic poverty that’s typical of what many Roma face across Europe.

Berlinale 2015: Jack Pettibone Riccobono’s Phenomenal The Seventh Fire

The first time the director Jack Pettibone Riccobono filmed the Ojibwe tribe at northern Minnesota’s White Earth Indian Reservation, it was to document the tribe’s efforts to preserve their local wild rice, considered sacred for centuries. Riccobono returned to the reservation in 2010 to show the short documentary about their efforts, The Sacred Food, but also to find someone to talk to him about a different, quietly growing problem at the reservation.

VFX Supervisor Dan Glass on the Vast World Of Jupiter Ascending

When Andy and Lana Wachowski release a picture, moviegoers can rely on it to be a visual experience. In large part, that is because of the talent of their visual effects team, which has been supervised since The Matrix Reloaded by Dan Glass. Glass, who has worked with the Wachowskis on two Matrix films, Speed Racer, and Cloud Atlas, is also credited as the visual effects supervisor for Jupiter Ascending,

Made in Maryland: Hanging With the Crew on the Set of Veep

It was a cold, blustery Tuesday in December when we were on the set of HBO’s Veep in downtown Baltimore. On the production front, however, It was a relatively calm day of filming by Veep standards, but a calm day on the set of this show still requires dozens of crew members to work their butts off. Whether it was Kim Bogues in craft services, costumer Constance Harris or assistant property managers Jamie Bishop and John Bert,

Selma Editor Spencer Averick on the Film’s Toughest Scenes to Cut

Troopers storm into a café. They're looking for the old man, his daughter and his grandson that they'd been chasing after breaking up a night march in Selma. The old man, Cager Lee (played by the phenomenal Henry Sanders), his daughter Viola (Charity Jordan) and his grandson Jimmie Lee Jackson (Keith Stanfield) are trying to hide their faces behind menus at a table in the back. The troopers spot them and throw the 82-year old Cager Lee to the ground,

American Sniper‘s Ben Reed on Researching his Role

American Sniper is based on the book by the late Chris Kyle, the most lethal sniper in American military history, serving four tours of duty in Iraq. The film has sparked heated debate, Twitter-feuds, and thoughtful analysis from some of the industry's best film critics, from Slate's Dana Stevens to the New Yorker's David Denby, arguing for the film's artistic merits as well as the nuances in its message,

A Q&A With Writer, Director & Actress Desiree Akhavan, New Girls Cast Member

Since her feature film debut, Appropriate Behavior, premiered at Sundance in 2014, Desiree Akhavan — the film's 30-year-old writer, director, and star — has been garnering buzz as the "Next Lena Dunham." It's a click-bait headline that grabs eyeballs, for sure, but it's also a lazy person's way of saying that she's an intelligent, funny, moral and sexual boundary-pushing, talented filmmaker who also happens to be a young woman who writes, directs and stars in her own stuff.

Making History: Selma Casting Director Aisha Coley

By now we all know that actor David Oyelowo didn’t get nominated for his utterly captivating performance as Martin Luther King Jr. in Ava DuVernay’s Selma. Nor did DuVernay get the nod for director. The film, however, was nominated for Best Picture, and there’s zero doubt that Oyelowo and DuVernay could and likely should have been nominated. Yet neither one of them, nor any of the members of the cast or crew, worked on this film for the awards.

Slamdance 2015: Gabrielle Demeestere on Adapting James Franco’s Yosemite

Last night Slamdance Film Festival’s closing night selection was Yosemite, adapted and directed by Gabrielle Demeestere from three of James Franco’s short stories, earning her a female directing grant from the festival for her fantastic first effort. Yosemite is structured as a triptych, following the thread of three 5th graders, Chris, Joe and Ted, who all live in Palo Alto, a picturesque Californian suburb that Demeestere infuses with dread. In the opening section,

Project Almanac Shoots Found Footage With Cinematographer Matthew Lloyd

As director Dean Israelite spun Matthew Lloyd a tale about kids creating a time machine, showing him detailed storyboard panels with picture of teens with a secret tools that looks liked a dark graphic novel, Lloyd made a decision. He would be the cinematographer for the Paramount feature Project Almanac.

The next challenge was figure out how to make the film’s found footage style work. The duo decided to split the difference,

Sundance 2015: Talking With The Royal Road Director Jenni Olson

One of the world’s leading experts on LGBT cinema and long a force in the independent film world, Jenni Olson is also a respected filmmaker whose latest, The Royal Road, earned critical acclaim when it played to enthusiastic audiences at its world premiere at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.

The Royal Road is a personal, poetic film essay marked by empty urban land-and cityscapes of San Francisco and Los Angeles,