“The Persian Version” Writer/Director Maryam Keshavarz on the Joys of Iranian American Culture

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The Persian Version won both the Audience Award and the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award in the U.S Dramatic Competition at Sundance this year, and for good reason. The film is a feel-good dramedy that combines stories of traditional Iranian culture with those of the Iranian American experience with a decidedly modern touch. The story follows Leila (Layla Mohammadi), a queer Iranian American working to keep her parents and many brothers who love her at a distance while navigating her ever more complicated personal life. The story highlights the complicated bond between Leila and her mother, Shireen (Niousha Noor), whose sacrifices—many for her family—include many secrets about her own past trauma from Leila. As intense as some aspects of the story are, audiences have embraced The Persian Version, which is a fun, dance-filled, and joyous ode to a modern Iranian American family. 

Much of the film is based on the life of writer/director Maryam Keshavarz, who herself was the only girl in a family with seven boys. It is in the specificity of her story that The Persian Version thrives because viewers from all over the world have found a connection in some aspect of the family or their cultural traditions. 

The Credits caught up with Keshavarz at the Middleburg Film Festival. She reveals how she crafted a story that has found appreciation from such a wide audience and shares how the cast and crew grew to feel like family. 

 

Your film is so filled with joy, and as you said, you were moved and struck by the sense of joy your family was able to find, even in difficult times. Can you speak to a few of the ways you injected your film with that joy and some of the responses you’ve gotten from audiences? 

Honestly, I was really only interested in making this film if I could show that element of our culture and of my family. Growing up, every time you heard the word Iranian, it was somehow related to terrorism, and it just was not my experience as an Iranian American growing up here. It was just so skewed. I always say, when I introduce the film, “I’m sorry, you get to spend two hours with my family, for better or for worse.”  The greatest aspect of showing this is having people who are Irish saying, “It’s just like my family,” or having people who are Mexican-American, or Vietnamese, or German, or whatever, who are different than their family for some reason, or they had issues with their mom, really relating to the film.

In a way, families across cultures are similar in crucial ways…

It is so important to me to show that we’re not so different. If you’ve never interacted with or seen people who are different than you, you can so easily dehumanize them, and so many bad things can result from that. If you feel close to a people, there’s just such a humanity and a connection that can happen. What I wanted to do with this film was create a connection, and I thought the joy and fun in our culture could really bring people in. Within our community, people are so proud because they’ve never gotten to see themselves in a light that they feel is so truthful. It’s been quite emotional, showing it to non-Iranian and Iranian families in the United States.

The movie shows both Iranian and Iranian-American characters, which is rare. 

That’s never been done. There are lots of films from Iran, which has great cinema, from Kiarostami to Farhadi to Dariush Mehrjui, who unfortunately was killed recently. You have great Iranian American filmmakers, like Ramin Bahrani or Desiree Akhavan, but there was never anything that connected our two worlds. One of the ways to show our journey as Americans is to honor where we come from. 

 

Silence is both a strength and a weakness, depending on how and when it’s used. Can you talk about your use of silence in the film? 

Silence is really a theme in the film. American culture is so much about therapy and about posting everything we do. We overshare in many ways. The thoughts I had around silence are that when you go through a very difficult time, sometimes not rehashing it, putting that trauma in a box, and moving forward is such an important element of older generations. That’s especially true for my parents and the baby boomer era. In every part of the world, they’ve experienced such great traumas, and that’s how they’ve been able to move forward. I thought that was such an interesting concept and how that was handed down to me. Through the filming, I explore different moments in which silence plays an important part. There’s a lot of verbosity and playfulness in the lead character, who not only tells you about her family but about where she comes from between Iran and America, as a playful interplay of her biculturalism, but also, a lot of the film relies on those things that are not said, and in the moments that are so quiet. It’s a play between that, particularly in the mother’s backstory, when we go back to Iran. In that section, there’s very little dialogue. I also play a lot with the environment and silence and how you deal with trauma, even as it’s happening.

Layla Mohammadi as LEILA in THE PERSIAN VERSION. Photo credit: Yiget Eken. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

There’s some great choreography in the movie, and it gives the feeling that not only the characters are close, but everyone in the production became close during filming. Is that true? 

There are some things that we had our choreographer do, especially the “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” sequence, and that’s because that has a lot of dancers and was rehearsed for a week or two. Then, for another scene, the actress Niousha Noor said, “I have an idea. This is a family that’s so tight. They would have their own dance. Can we show you something?”  She had choreographed, taped, and sent this dance to the brothers, and they were all dancing on their days off together and practicing. When they came to show it to me, they had rehearsed it for a week. I thought it was so fun. Niousha, the actress who plays the mother, had done all that. That’s why, if you notice in the film, that dance scene is mostly in one shot. There weren’t many cuts at all because we knew ahead of time with the choreography would be, so we planned it. And it was really fun because we thought it told the story of the family dynamic in a really nice way.

Layla Mohammadi as LEILA, Niousha Noor as SHIRIN in THE PERSIAN VERSION. Photo credit: Yiget Eken. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

There’s also a powerful catharsis around trauma as part of the arc of your story. 

Right. In the end, by speaking the name, there’s a moment where the trauma ends because we’re able to literally name that trauma. And with naming it, it brings new life. It goes from something dead that’s festering in some ways to something alive that can create hope. The name at the end of the film, Arezou, means hope. Arezou is a wish, actually, in Persian. It has many meanings, but Arezou is the concept of hope and a wish combined together. I wanted to leave the audience with that idea at the end.

The aspect of The Persian Version that goes back and forth between Iranian life with the mother’s story and Iranian American life with the daughter really opens up awareness about similarities and differences within families and within cultures.

I wanted that backstory, why people come to the US, to be really prevalent in this film. You look at your parents, and you judge them and wonder why they can’t be more modern. We don’t even practice empathy towards our own parents, but we expect our parents to practice empathy towards us as the next generation. We can never understand who we are unless we look at our parents’ journeys and see them as people.  I think of my mother at 14 or my dad at 19, and in that light, everything shifts. You can really understand how trauma affects people’s lives and how it becomes ingrained in the next generation. So much of this film is about acknowledging that and finding a way to move beyond it. For me, this film was a practice in empathy, and I think that’s something this country needs right now desperately. We’ve become so fractured, and we judge and hate people we’ve never met. This film is to challenge you within your own family not to do that, and not to do that also within the greater landscape of American culture. 

 

The Persian Version is in select theaters now nationwide. 

 

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Featured image: Bijan Daneshmand as ALI REZA, Niousha Noor as SHIRIN, Chiara Stella as YOUNG LEILA in THE PERSIAN VERSION. Photo credit: Yiget Eken. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

 

Meg Ryan on Dedicating Her First Movie in Eight Years to Nora Ephron

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How can Hollywood — and the world, for that matter — carry on without Meg Ryan? For someone whose fame blazed like a supernova, her absence has been felt. Ryan’s last movie was the bittersweet 2016 coming-of-age drama Ithaca, which she directed, and her last lead roles were 2008’s The Women and 2009’s little-seen comedy Serious Moonlight. Since then, she has mostly disappeared from the public eye. As Ryan tells it, she stepped away to pursue other interests, including spending time with her two kids. 

Everyone loves a comeback, which brings us to What Happens Later, Ryan’s first film in eight years. Adapting a play by Steven Dietz, Ryan pulled quadruple duty: She directed, co-wrote, produced, and starred opposite David Duchovny. They play Willa and Bill, college sweethearts who reunite when they find themselves stranded in the same airport during a winter storm. With nowhere for them to go, What Happens Later is effectively one long conversation between the two exes. They catch up, rehash old history, and swap observations about weathering the passage of time. The surrounding airport carries a touch of magical realism, with loudspeaker announcements and billboards responding to Willa and Bill as they wait out their flight delays. The movie isn’t a traditional romantic comedy, but it does recall the twinkly charm that Ryan perfected in When Harry Met Sally…, Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail, and Kate & Leopold. 

Over Zoom, Ryan talked about ending her Hollywood hiatus, the surging appreciation for the once-controversial In the Cut, and how she used What Happens Later to pay tribute to the most important director of her career. 

 

At what point did you decide to dedicate this film to Nora Ephron?

Almost the whole time, I thought about her. I am so grateful to her in general. But the idea of dedicating it to her came in the end. We had to ask the DGA to approve putting her dedication before my credit. It just felt like exactly the right thing to do. This is a piece of work that says, “I was paying attention, lady, and thank you because my life is full of blessings.” And I have to say, the DGA unanimously voted for us to be able to have that credit. 

I’m sure it wasn’t a hard vote on their part. Do you feel like you evoke Nora in your directing style?

I don’t think I’ve done enough even to have a style. Serving this story was about trying to get it on its feet and not have it feel small. The directorial imperative was to make it have scope because it’s such a small and distilled story. Only two people talk. It wasn’t a big budget, so we had to pay a lot of attention to how that magical environment would be created on a shoestring. Those are big choices to make in the beginning: to shoot in a museum, to let the magic come from the reflections on the floor or the snow outside. We took away signs. We created a liminal environment. You will never see a gate number. None of that is really happening in the environment, and the ways to evoke that that we had control over were very basic, very lo-fi. It had to do with how the airport was talking to them.

David Duchovny and Meg Rey in “What Happens Later.” Courtesy Bleecker Street.

The airport you create for this movie is a little bit removed from reality, but any airport is like a cocoon. It has its own rules, its own resources, and you are away from the outside world. What did that setting allow you to capture in terms of these characters and their unexpected reunion? 

You’re right; it’s a natural liminal space. That was the original setting of the play, so the filmmakers took that idea and extended it as far out as we could. The airport has sentience, in a way. It was messaging them. The airport, as a larger force, has their good at heart. The airport always says yes. The airport’s imperative is that they always connect, which is an E.M. Forster quote: “Live in fragments no longer.” It’s a time machine, too. Time is very different in an airport. You’re very disoriented, and yet you’re also comforted by the unanimity of the way most airports in the world look. I remember going to an airport in Seoul, and I was seeing people get married there. The architecture of it was so beautiful. Some of these airports all over the world are actually beautiful. Of course, some regional airports in our country are not. But it’s possible to have a beautiful space there. And it’s romantic. 

Meg Ryan. Courtesy Bleecker Street.

Everything that happens in an airport has a little bit of kismet to it.

You’re not in charge. 

Given that it’s been eight years since you last made a movie, were you only interested in doing something that you were able to write and direct yourself?

No. This sort of came along. It was reactive, mostly to the pandemic. I had time to write and do this. Actually, I felt like the first movie I did; at the end, I was like, “Oh, I want to do this again because I’m starting to understand the tools that are at my disposal as a storyteller.” During the pandemic, I rented a house, and there was one book there. It was Sapiens [by Yuval Noah Harari], and it was talking about how what human beings have in common is this quirk in our brain that has to do with holding abstract ideas and holding stories — it’s essential. There was no big plan, to be honest. It was a story that came along that seemed possible to do. 

What kind of scripts have you been sent over the last several years?

Some rom-coms, some stories about children because of Ithaca, some adaptations of books. But what I really learned from this is that you just have to love it. It’s three straight years. It’s a giant commitment, and I can’t imagine doing it and not loving the story. The best part is being around other artists, all operating at the top of their game.  

There’s a dance sequence with David set to the Lightning Seeds song “Pure.” How did you land on that song?

The Lightning Seeds song came to us through our musical supervisor. I think it’s only been used in one movie since the ’90s, and it made us all dance in our chairs. That scene is all about them being free and the airport giving them that song after it’s been giving them all this terrible music.

David Duchovny and Meg Ryan. Courtesy Bleecker Street.

All those inferior cover songs.

And I have to say a shout-out to Sheryl Crow and Alanis Morissette and Tom Petty. All those estates really trusted us with messing up their great music. 

There’s a moving conversation between Willa and Bill in the airport bar where they talk about worrying that nobody wants to hear from them anymore now that they’ve aged. What struck me is whether that sentiment is autobiographical for you, especially within the context of Hollywood and the business as you’ve experienced it. 

I don’t know that I think about it so much in terms of Hollywood, really. She goes, “We’re old, and we’re mute, and we’re savaged by the pharmaceutical giants.” And it’s so lame how she’s like, “I don’t accept my fate.” But it’s a little lament. He says, “Just when you get old enough to have something interesting to say, nobody wants to hear it.” I guess that just feels true. The world moves on, which it should. But you can get good at something after a long time, and then it’s no longer of use. It’s outrageous. I personally don’t feel all that sad about it. I don’t feel any kind of dead end. I hope that’s not what the movie says. It’s just a kind of lament. 

Meg Ryan and David Duchovny. Courtesy Bleecker Street.

When The Power of the Dog came out a couple of years ago, there was a widespread reappraisal of In the Cut. A lot of people talked about how misunderstood and underrated it was. I wonder if you noticed that and what it means to you.

Well, I’m just happy to say that Jane [Campion] is a friend of mine. She is so brave. She would say when we were making that movie that it was about grief, and a grief of hers that was particular. At that time, it was a grief of New York. New York was still shrouded in post-9/11 stuff. The buildings had black draping on them. To her, she was also grieving the idea of romance. She felt, at that time, let down by the sort of Arthurian mythology — you know, knight-in-shining-armor mythology that just doesn’t have anything to do with anything anymore. She’s a great person to have as a friend because she thinks so deeply. I was talking to Jane a little bit about this before we shot this movie. I said, “It’s going to be so beautiful because it’ll be snowing outside. We’ll have this liquid environment inside but frozen outside.” And she goes, “Meg, it’ll be beautiful because you and David will connect.” That’s the value of an artist. She’s that extraordinary. She could distill something, and it really was true: No matter how beautiful that our movie looks, and I think it does look really beautiful, the soul of it is all in the connection these two people have.

Does it mean something to you, though, to have people reacknowledging that film in particular?

If I really were aware of that, I would feel proud. I’m very proud of that movie. I just don’t read so much about it. I’m proud of working with her, of course. I love Mark [Ruffalo] in that movie. I love the darkness of that movie. That movie made me feel, maybe for the first time ever, that I was an actress. How it’s received in the world is not my affair. Even this little one: We’re just blowing up a balloon, and now it’s not ours anymore. It’s yours. 

Featured image: Meg Ryan in “What Happens Later.” Courtesy Bleecker Street.

“The Marvels” Clip Reveals What Happens When a Superhero and a Superfan Become a Superteam

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A superhero and a superfan become a superteam—this would be one way of summing up the vibe in The Marvels. In a brand new clip for co-writer/director Nia DaCosta’s upcoming film, we get to see firsthand what happens when Carol Danvers, aka Captain Marvel, goes from a solo act to a team player. Well, sort of. Carol’s got her hands full as she fights off some Kree revolutionaries who mean her nothing but harm, but this time, she’s got the pint-sized powerhouse who also happens to idolize her, Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani, reprising her role from her Disney+ series Ms. Marvel) fighting alongside her. Well, again, sort of. Carol and Kamala are both on the same side, but every time they use their powers, they switch places.

The reason for this temporal oddity is something we’ve learned from previous trailers. When Carol goes to check out an anomalous wormhole in space, her powers end up getting all mixed up with not only Kamala Khan but also Carol’s estranged niece, S.A.B.E.R. astronaut Captain Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Harris). Going forward, these three find that with their powers comes the great responsibility of figuring out the suddenly new setting they’re transported to. It’s a tricky bit of business, and it’ll give The Marvels a unique twist.

These three very different but equally courageous women will need to join forces to take on a Kree revolutionary named Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton), who really doesn’t like Captain Marvel and threatens to tear down Carol and everyone and everything she holds dear.

Samuel L. Jackson returns as Nick Fury, and he’s joined by Park Seo-joon, Zenobia Shroff, Saagar Shaikh, Mohan Kapur, Jessica Zhou, and Caroline Simonnet.

Higher. Further. Faster. These three words have long been the motto of Captain Marvel, but now that she’s part of a super-team, she’s added another—together.

Check out the clip below. The Marvels soars into theaters on November 10.

For more on The Marvels, check out these stories:

“The Marvels” Teaser Tracks the Evolution of Captain Marvel

New “The Marvels” Teaser Reveals a New Superteam and an Old Ally in Nick Fury

“The Marvels” Drops New IMAX Spot That Goes Higher, Further, Faster

“The Marvels” Drops Electric New Trailer Ahead of Director Nia DaCosta’s Big Marvel Studios Debut

Featured image: (L-R): Brie Larson as Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers and Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan in Marvel Studios’ THE MARVELS. Photo by Laura Radford. © 2023 MARVEL.

“Freelance” Writer Jacob Lentz on Going From “Jimmy Kimmel Live” to Penning his Feature Debut

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It sounds like the setup to a sketch: a washed-up journalist, a peacocking dictator, and a bored ex-Special Forces guy walk into a coup… That may be the premise of the action-comedy Freelance (in theaters now), the first feature film from long-time Jimmy Kimmel Live writer Jacob Lentz, but the punchline isn’t what you’d expect. Mason Pettits (John Cena) is a frustrated lawyer who gets a call from an old military buddy turned private military contractor, Sebastian Earle (Christian Slater), to provide security to a journalist, Claire Wellington (Alison Brie), trying to get a derailed career back on track. Her lifeline is an exclusive interview with the supposedly ruthless dictator Juan Venegas (Juan Pablo Raba) of a fictional country called Paldonia. Venegas turns out to be pretty fun—for a dictator. Mason and Claire are like oil and water. The three of them are stuck together in an SUV when masked shooters block them in on a bridge in the middle of the jungle. The shooter’s target is Venegas, but everyone in this ill-matched group has to work together to make it out alive.

L-r: John Cena and Juan Pablo Raba. Courtesy Relativity Media.

When Lentz started writing, he began with Mason, a character inspired by a friend and an unrelated, serendipitous kick reading about PMCs. The idea for Venegas came out of the same set of books, “and the more I thought about him, the more I thought, this is a person who’s alternately funny and horrible, but maybe not as horrible as we want him to be,” said Lentz. Venegas’s character is an unexpected source of comic relief, but it’s even more of a surprise when (spoiler alert) Claire and Mason do not get together. “It came up a few times, and I was just like, that’s what always happens,” the writer said. “What if it’s not about the action hero getting the girl?” Instead, Mason earnestly hopes to repair his relationship with his wife (Alice Eve), while Claire is focused, to the point of risk of life and limb, on getting her scoop. The pair just have to make it through the coup.

L-r: John Cena, Alison Brie, and Juan Pablo Raba. Courtesy Relativity Media.

To do that, there’s hand-to-hand combat, a helicopter that has to be taken down, and horses on which to flee. Director Pierre Morel (Taken, Peppermint) favored practical stunts over visual effects, an outcome Lentz was aiming for while he was still in the writing process. “I think anyone paying attention would have to admit that every movie has some preposterous part to it,” he said, but with so much of the action in Freelance performed practically, “I got really lucky. I think the film is better for it, and I’d give a lot of that credit to Pierre and his team.”

L-r: John Cena, Alison Brie. Courtesy Relativity Media.

Fully invented is the nation of Paldonia, the name of which was workshopped by Lentz and the film’s producers. A fake country is reminiscent of 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick, in which an enemy nation-state that’s never named has to be defeated at all costs. “I don’t know if it’s a trend,” said Lentz, of relying on fictional or anonymous realms. He avoided setting Freelance in a real country to avoid casting aspersions on a real place. Filming in Colombia with a sizable local team, he asked some of the crew if they would have minded if Paldonia was instead called Colombia. “They generally said no, we wouldn’t have really cared, but we like that it’s a pretend country,” he said

Filming in Colombia. Courtesy Relativity Media.

Before writing his first feature, Lentz was a writer for late-night television. “The big things I credit Jimmy Kimmel Live with for ultimately getting this movie made was that you just have to do the work and be nice about it,” he said. And, of course, humor is humor, and Mason, Claire, and Venegas’s fight to make it out alive is not without laughs, whether absurd (Venegas’s entire partnership with Paldonia’s political left) or slapstick (an awkward shower scene). Writing for late-night comedy encouraged Freelance’s funny side. “The show helped me become much more at ease at putting a joke somewhere,” Lentz said.    

For more stories on new films and series, check these out:

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Marvel’s “Daredevil: Born Again” Series Get New Showrunner & Directors

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Featured image: L-r: John Cena, Juan Pablo Raba, and Alison Brie. Courtesy Relativity Media.

 

 

 

 

 

Marvel’s “Daredevil: Born Again” Series Get New Showrunner & Directors

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Daredevil: Born Again is, apologies for the pun, born again. Marvel Studios has given the upcoming series a creative overhaul, bringing in a showrunner and new directors to retool the series, which was in mid-production in New York when it had to pause due to the writer’s and actor’s strike. The show had been under the direction of Chris Ord and Matt Corman, who were both the head writers.

The new showrunner stepping in is Dario Scardapane, who has a ton of TV experience and who worked on Netflix’s The Punisher, as well as Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan for Amazon. Scardapane joins directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, the team that helmed two episodes of Loki season two and will direct the remaining episodes of Daredevil: Born Again. Benson and Moorhead made a name for themselves directing festival and cult films, including Synchronic, Spring, and Endless, often writing, acting, directing, producing, editing, and doing the visual effects on their films. Needless to say, they won’t have to cover all that ground working on a Marvel Studios show.

The first iteration of Daredevil lived on Netflix in the mid-2010s, with Charlie Cox playing the blind lawyer Matt Murdock, who becomes the titular superhero at night. The original Daredevil, including its spinoff The Punisher, were both visceral, at times brutal affairs, and this is the direction Marvel wants to take the new series. Some of the scenes and episodes that were shot already for Daredevil: Born Again will be kept while Scardapane writes new episodes and scenes, weaving in what was previously filmed.

Benson and Moorehead will helm the remaining episodes, while Corman and Ord will serve as executive producers.

Bringing in a showrunner to shape a series is new for Marvel. Previously, Marvel had approached their TV installments much the way they did their MCU films, but now they’re taking a more tried-and-tested approach.

Scardapane’s TV chops are considerable, including creating and producing NBC’s medical drama Trauma, serving as a consulting producer on F/X’s Peabody-award-winning crime drama The Bridge, and working on NBC’s political drama State of Affairs before he leaped into the streaming world as writer and executive producer on Punisher and writer and consulting producer on Amazon’s Jack Ryan. 

For more on all things Marvel Studios, check out these stories:

“The Marvels” Teaser Tracks the Evolution of Captain Marvel

Director Shawn Levy on Synchronicity Between His “Deadpool 3” and Secret “Star Wars” Movie

New “The Marvels” Teaser Reveals a New Superteam and an Old Ally in Nick Fury

“Loki” Drops New Extended Look at Season 2 Ahead of Premiere

Featured image: Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofio in Marvel’s Daredevil. Photo by Nicole Rivelli/Netflix

Family, Friends, and Fellow Stars Remember Matthew Perry

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As you likely heard, Matthew Perry passed away this weekend at 54. Perry, who played numerous roles across his career, became a huge star playing Chandler Bing on NBC’s Friends, utilizing his peerless comedic timing and razor-sharp wit to immortalize a lovable, anxious character who helped make the series one of the biggest hits in TV history. Perry died this past Saturday night in his Los Angeles home, law enforcement sources told the Los Angeles Times. 

Perry’s family shared a statement with People, “We are heartbroken by the tragic loss of our beloved son and brother. Matthew brought so much joy to the world, both as an actor and a friend…You all meant so much to him and we appreciate the tremendous outpouring of love.”

The Hollywood Reporter shared this statement from Warner Bros. TV, which produced Friends, “We are devastated by the passing of our dear friend Matthew Perry. Matthew was an incredibly gifted actor and an indelible part of the Warner Bros. Television Group family. The impact of his comedic genius was felt around the world, and his legacy will live on in the hearts of so many. This is a heartbreaking day, and we send our love to his family, his loved ones, and all of his devoted fans.”

“We are incredibly saddened by the too soon passing of Matthew Perry,” wrote NBC in a statement. “He brought so much joy to hundreds of millions of people around the world with his pitch-perfect comedic timing and wry wit. His legacy will live on through countless generations.”

This past Sunday night, Nick at Nite, which airs Friends, broadcast Matthew Perry: Thanks for Being a Friend at 10 p.m., which was then followed by fan-favorite episodes that featured Perry, as well as brand-new interviews with the star and behind-the-scenes moments from the set of the seminal series.

On Instagram, Selma Blair shared this tribute, “My oldest boy friend. All of us loved Matthew Perry, and I did especially. Every day. I loved him unconditionally. And he me. And I’m broken. Broken hearted. Sweet dreams Matty. Sweet dreams.”

Pertty’s co-star in the TV series The Odd Couple, Yvette Nicole Brown, wrote this, “Our #OddCouple family suffered a great loss today. The entire entertainment world has. I am too sad about the news to say more than this: @mattyperry4 was a sweetheart who deserved more peace in this life. 54 is too young to go. We love you, Matty! #RIPMatthewPerry.”

Alyssa Milano shared a clip of the pair on Who’s the Boss?, writing, “Matty was always the funniest person in the room. And the KINDEST. He was kind. Matty, remember when we used to go play bingo at that church in the valley? You made me laugh that painful kind of laugh. A cry laugh. You made me cry-laugh.”

Perry’s Friends co-star Maggie Wheeler, who played Chandler’s on-and-off girlfriend, wrote, “What a loss. The world will miss you Mathew Perry. The joy you brought to so many in your too short lifetime will live on. I feel so very blessed by every creative moment we shared.”

Mira Sorvino, who co-starred with Perry in 1994’s Parallel Lives, wrote on X, “Oh no!!! Matthew Perry!! You sweet, troubled soul!! May you find peace and happiness in Heaven, making everyone laugh with your singular wit!!!”

Saturday Night Live, which was hosted by comedian Nate Bargatze, showed this special tribute card of Perry at the end of Saturday’s show. Perry hosted SNL on Oct. 4, 1997, with musical guest Oasis.

Courtesy NBC

Here are a few more tributes:

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Featured image: Matthew Perry in September 21, 2009, in Los Angeles, California.

How Disney’s 100 Year Journey Began With Four Pages and Four Signatures

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The Walt Disney Company celebrated its 100th anniversary on October 16th. That’s a century’s worth of mythmaking and storytelling, from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) to their upcoming animated feature Wish (hitting theaters on November 22), with a slew of iconic films, characters, a media empire, and theme parks across the world in between. The breadth of Disney’s reach is hard to overestimate. Take the company’s mascot, Mickey Mouse—Mickey is a global icon, immediately recognizable by people in every corner of the world. Disney’s contributions to the world of entertainment are staggering, and any reckoning with the output must begin with their animated films.

Dumbo, Bambi, Cinderella, Peter Pan, Lady in the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty, One Hundred and One Dalmations, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, The Nightmare Before Christmas (this Tim Burton classic, one of the boldest Disney releases of its time, is having its own 30th year anniversary on October 29th), The Lion King…the list goes on. And on. And again, these are just some of their most celebrated animated films, a list that doesn’t include their Pixar movies, live-action films, television series, and more.

A black and white still depicting an Ink & Paint artist holding a painting of the Seven Dwarfs for Walt Disney’s animated feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Courtesy Walt Disney Archives, Photo Library.
A black and white still depicting an Ink & Paint artist holding a painting
of the Seven Dwarfs for Walt Disney’s animated feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Courtesy Walt Disney Archives, Photo Library.

This huge universe of dream weaving, all these foundational stories populated by characters we feel we know well enough to classify as family or friends, or in the case of the likes of Cruella de Vil, Maleficent, Ursula, Scar, or Captain Hook, like worthy if worrisome adversaries, began with a simple contract that hardly ran four pages long.

Walt Disney had tried to develop two earlier animation studios in Kansas City, both of which failed. So, he packed up and moved west to Los Angeles to try his luck in the movie business. He couldn’t find work acting or directing, so he turned to a pilot film he’d made in Kansas City and even convinced his brother, Roy, to leave behind a solid career in banking and form another animation studio together—the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio.

When we interviewed Becky Cline, director of the Walt Disney Archives, she told us all sorts of magical stories about the props, costumes, photographs, and precious possessions that she and her team help catalog, care for, and lend out to current productions, curious museums and exhibits, and more. All of the assets in Disney’s vast archives are there because of that original contract. She explained this founding document in greater detail during Disney’s celebration of their centennial.

“The Walt Disney Company officially began on October 16, 1923, when Walt Disney signed a very simple contract in his uncle’s Hollywood home,” she said. “With this agreement, Walt and Roy Disney were able to produce and distribute a series of silent cartoons, the Alice Comedies. This opened a door to the development and production of 100 years of Disney magic that has enchanted the whole world.”

The contract was with Margaret Winkler, a New York cartoon distributor, at 4406 Kingswell Avenue in Los Angeles, where Walt was living. The contract was signed by Walt Disney, Winkler, her future husband and later distributor of Walt’s “Oswald the Lucky Rabbit” cartoon series, Charles Mintz, and Walt’s uncle, Robert Disney. The Alice Comedies were silent cartoons that the Disneys made between 1924 and 1927, centered on a real girl who went on magical adventures in a cartoon wonderland. Alice was played by Virginia Davis, and her animated cat, created by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, was named Julius. A mashup magical world of live-action blended with animation—it sounds like the Disney we still know today, 100 years later.

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“Pain Hustlers” Director David Yates on Departing From the “Harry Potter” Films in Subversive Style

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In Pain Hustlers, the opioid crisis takes on a different tenor than that previously seen in hard-hitting dramas like Hulu’s limited series Dopesick and fellow Netflix’s own Painkiller. While still inspired by actual events, David Yates’ retelling of a “fascinating state of the nation” falls more in line with the big-bang type of storytelling akin to The Wolf of Wall Street and The Big Short.

“What that gave us was just license to play, and we could be a bit more subversive and playful, and the humor we could bring to the story felt [that] this movie would then depart from some of the other dramas that were being made in the opioid drama space,” Yates says.

Over the course of a year, Yates and Wells Tower completed a screenplay based loosely on Evan Hughes’ 2018 New York Times Magazine article about billionaire John Kapoor’s Insys, a company that reached obscene heights by incentivizing the overprescription of a dangerous fentanyl spray. Concurrently, Hughes was gathering fodder for his eponymous novel while attending Kapoor’s trial, which resulted in the disgraced founder’s eventual 66-month sentencing for his bribery.

“We knew at the very outset that we didn’t want it to be a beat-by-beat translation of Evan’s book,” said Yates, best known for his directorial work on the latter handful of Harry Potter films and subsequent Fantastic Beasts spinoffs. “We wanted to use Evan’s book as a starting point and to have the artistic license to build a world based on Evan’s book, and in that journey, we created the character of Liza Drake, someone we felt could carry this story and bring us into it in a way that felt universal and accessible.”

 

Portrayed by Emily Blunt, Liza Drake is a working-class single mother who, after a chance encounter with Chris Evans’ sleazy corporate man Pete Brenner at a strip club, enters the highly risky, highly rewarding, and highly dubious world of pharmaceuticals. As the upstart company lavishly expands, Liza is confronted with her daughter’s worsening medical condition, her erratic and eccentric boss, and the life-and-death fallout of the company’s elaborate kickback schemes.

Liza and Pete, Yates said, are composite figures inspired by several different real people.

“The fact that Liza is a single mum means that perhaps we have a bit more natural empathy for her in some regards,” Yates said. “We always wanted to explore this idea of a human being who’s undervalued, underappreciated, has a real challenge in her life to be accepted and to be acknowledged and to be respected, but she’s got this amazing superpower, which is empathy and the ability to look at someone and realize how to sell something to them and how to sort of manipulate them, really.”

Pain Hustlers (L-R) Chris Evans as Brenner, Andy Garcia as Neel and Emily Blunt as Liza in Pain Hustlers. Cr. Brian Douglas/Netflix © 2023.

For both Blunt and Yates, while it was important that the story unfolds through the lens of a woman acting out of desperation rather than greed, Liza is not a martyr nor a blindsided innocent victim.

“There is a fine balance,” Yates explained. “We do think that we wanted Liza to realize she was doing the wrong thing ultimately but still do it. That was an important part of the story for us. Emily, in particular, was very passionate about that; she didn’t want to have a character who was cleaner than clean, who was just a decent person. She was intrigued by a human being who was a bit dodgy.”

Emily Blunt in “Pain Hustlers.” Courtesy Netflix.

In a great departure from the work Yates is known for, Pain Hustlers — which had its initial premiere on Sept. 11 at the Toronto International Film Festival — thrives in chaos, reaching a fever pitch when the pharma company arrives at its calm-before-the-storm billion-dollar evaluation. 

“I wanted the movie to feel relentless in its pace, in many ways reflecting the crazy pace of which this company went from this tiny outfit that was failing into this crazy huge IPO success story,” the director said. “We wanted to mirror that in the language of the film.”

Pain Hustlers – BTS – Director/Producer David Yates on the set of Pain Hustlers. Cr. Betina La Plante/Netflix © 2023.

As a result, the film employs numerous jump cuts and freeze frames, over which several characters narrate their thoughts. In one scene, Blunt’s character pauses to the tune of a cash register opening: kaching.

“When I was making Potter or when I was making Beasts, those movies naturally lend themselves to a very classical treatment, very elegant camerawork, gentle movement, very classic storytelling technique, whereas this story demanded something a little bit more bonkers,” Yates described.

 

With a “frenetic and fractured” cinematic style, Pain Hustlers is also supplemented by a pseudo-documentary element that hints at the story’s real-life inspiration and allows for medical jargon to be outlined in a concise manner. 

“It was a way of giving context and also insight into how the characters were feeling too,” Yates said. “So it was a style that was baked in pretty early on in the way Wells was building the script.”

To match the film’s “propulsive” pace, Yates worked closely across the board with departments like music and costume to nail the film’s audiovisual language. Having previously collaborated with Colleen Atwood, Yates and the renowned costume designer worked to depict Liza’s evolution through costume.

Pain Hustlers – Emily Blunt as Liza in Pain Hustlers. Cr. Brian Douglas/Netflix © 2023.

“It was fun charting this journey of a woman going from poverty to riches, from feeling a failure in life to someone who was a huge business success, but all in a slightly blingy, bold, slightly off-color way,” Yates said.

But even as the film dramatizes one segment of a country’s epidemic, Yates stressed that the movie’s goal was to be as thought-provoking and moving as it is entertaining. To accurately and sensitively depict the serious subject matter, Yates and Blunt collaborated with the Georgia Prevention Project and spoke to victims’ loved ones. As the consequences of Liza and Pete’s actions are realized, the film’s tone matches the sobriety of the moment.

“The film starts to settle down in the final third as it gets a bit more serious, and we use fewer techniques to fly the story along as the consequences of what these characters are doing come home to roost and to rest,” Yates said.

For the filmmaker, Pain Hustlers is both a hell of a ride and a lesson that audiences can learn from: “I would hope that [people] watch the movie and they come away realizing the depth of the crisis but also ask questions next time they go to the doctors to get a prescription,” he said.

Pain Hustlers is now playing in theaters, with a Netflix debut set for Oct. 27.

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Featured image: Pain Hustlers – (L to R) Emily Blunt as Liza and Chris Evans as Brenner in Pain Hustlers. Cr. Brian Douglas/Netflix © 2023.

“The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes” Reveals Viola Davis as the Head Gamemaker

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You can’t ask for an actor with more gravitas to supercharge your movie than Viola Davis. In a new clip for The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, Davis’s regal presence as Dr. Volumnia Gaul, the head gamemaker, commands a literal stage as she addresses a room full of new academy members. “How tantalizing to see all your shining young faces on this auspicious day,” Dr. Gaul says after a laugh so ominous you can practically see the blood freeze in the youngsters’ veins.

The new clip introduces us to Dr. Volumnia Gaul and Gaul to the new members as not only the head gamemaker, but the woman in charge of the war department and all its affiliated concerns. Hunger Games heads know that the gamemaker is the person responsible for crafting the treacherous, wickedly ingenious spectacle of carnage that takes place every year in Panem. The ostensible purpose of the games is to keep the peace among the districts by requiring every one of them to sacrifice two children to participate. Nearly all of them won’t come home, and their deaths will be brutal—by design—and televised. “I’ve broken free of my laboratory today to examine you,” Dr. Gaul says, “the leaders of the next generation. I won’t be around forever, after all.”

At this, Dr. Gaul introduces the dean of the Academy and creator of the Hunger Games himself, Casca Highbottom (Peter Dinklage), a man who seems almost pained by the thing he’s brought into the world. Among the young faces, we see one that will have not only a huge role to play here but in the future of Panem, a young Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth), who will find himself mentoring a young tribute from District 12, Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler). Their relationship will form the crux of the adventure in director Francis Lawrence’s upcoming prequel.

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is set 64 years before the events in the original trilogy as Panem prepares for the 10th Annual Games. As the clip shows, the film will enjoy some of the finest actors working today as viewers are brought back to the world that made Jennifer Lawrence a superstar and that Lawrence, in turn, helped turn into a cultural phenomenon.

Other important characters you’ll get to know are Lucretius “Lucky” Flickerman (Jason Schwartzman), Coriolanus’s Academy classmates Clemensia Dovecote (Ashley Liao), and Sejanus Plinth (Josh Andrés Rivera).

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes arrives in theaters on November 17.

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Featured image: Viola Davis as Dr Volumnia Gaul in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Photo Credit: Murray Close

“The Marvels” Teaser Tracks the Evolution of Captain Marvel

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Renegade. Hero. Avenger.

This is how Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) describes Carol Danvers, aka Captain Marvel, arguably the most potent superhero who ever fought alongside the Avengers (sorry, Thor) in this new The Marvels teaser.

“Captain Marvel is one of the most popular characters in the Marvel universe,” says Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige. “One of the highlights of my career was introducing Brie Larson as Captain Marvel.”

The teaser then lets Captain Marvel herself speak about what it was like stepping into this iconic role. “Trying on the Captain Marvel suit for the first time was the most surreal experience of my life,” says Brie Larson. “I remember feeling this jolt in my heart. It had given me the most dynamic character that I’d ever had the chance to play. I want to bring the full scope of what Captain Marvel can be.”

“Carol helps me discover things about myself,” says Nick Fury himself, Samuel L. Jackson. “Nick helps her discover who she is.”

“I’m excited for fans to see Captain Marvel do something so different from anything she’s done before,” says The Marvels co-writer and director Nia DaCosta.

DaCosta’s The Marvels takes Captain Marvel, usually a lone operator keeping the universe safe and dropping in on Earth when needed, and puts her in a predicament that will require her to form a team. It’s not a choice Carol is really dying to make. Or, perhaps to put it more succinctly, it’s a choice Carol has to make if she wants to keep from dying, as well as protect all the other people in harm’s way.

The new film finds Carol Danvers becoming cosmically entangled with her estranged niece, S.A.B.E.R. astronaut Captain Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Harris), who was just a young girl who looked up to Carol in the original Captain Marvel and then appeared (as played by Harris) in WandaVision, and Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani, reprising her role from Disney+’s Ms. Marvel) a young girl from Jersey City who has gone from idolizing Captain Marvel to being her (very young) contemporary. When a cosmic mishap involving an anomalous wormhole that Carol was exploring conjoins these three superpowered women into a bizarre temporal trap (when one uses their powers, they switch places with another), things get complicated. The new team will need to learn how to harness their unique situation to take on a Kree revolutionary named Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton), who has a bone to pick with Captain Marvel and the power, and the rage, to bring down everything Carol holds dear.

On the scene in The Marvels is, of course, Carol’s old pal Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson). The cast also includes Park Seo-joon, Zenobia Shroff, Saagar Shaikh, Mohan Kapur, Jessica Zhou, and Caroline Simonnet.

The Marvels lands in theaters on November 10:

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Featured image: Brie Larson as Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers in Marvel Studios’ THE MARVELS. Photo by Laura Radford. © 2023 MARVEL.

The Official Trailer for Bradley Cooper’s “Maestro” Hits All the Right Notes

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The official trailer for Bradley Cooper’s Maestro has arrived, giving us our most in-depth look yet at his look at the life of the legendary conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein (Cooper) and his lifelong relationship with actress and activist Felicia Montealegre Cohn Bernstein (Carey Mulligan). This epic love story, Cooper’s first directorial effort since A Star is Born, is based on a script he co-wrote with Josh Singer.

The trailer centers on both the lasting relationship between Leonard and Felicia, as well as the music that is central to their lives and his legacy. The trailer teases out the complexity of their relationship, the mercurial nature of this musical titan, his varied romantic tastes, and the way that his love of people was most vividly displayed by his commitment to music. “I love people so much that it’s hard for me to be alone,” Bernstein says at one point, “and music, it keeps me glued to life.”

Joining Cooper and Mulligan are Matt Bomer, Maya Hawke, Sarah Silverman, Michael Urie, Josh Hamilton, Scott Ellis, Gideon Glick, Sam Nivola, Alexa Swinton, and Miriam Shor. Produces include none other than Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg. Spielberg, of course, directed the recent film adaptation of Bernstein’s deathless West Side Story.

Check out the trailer below. Maestro hits select theaters on November 22 and Netflix on December 20.

 

For more on big titles on Netflix, check these out:

“The Crown” Season 6, George C. Wolfe’s “Rustin,” David Fincher’s “The Killer” And More Highlight Netflix’s November Titles

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“Fair Play” Writer/Director Chloe Domont Makes a Killing on Male Fragility

Featured image: Maestro. (L to R) Soloists Isabel Leonard and Rosa Feola with Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein (Director/Writer/Producer) in Maestro. Cr. Jason McDonald/Netflix © 2023.

“The Crown” Season 6, George C. Wolfe’s “Rustin,” David Fincher’s “The Killer” And More Highlight Netflix’s November Titles

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A new sizzle reel for Netflix’s November slate has dropped, revealing a slew of high-profile upcoming films and series bowing in the coming month. One of the biggest titles is the return of The Crown season 6 (November 16), which will explore arguably the darkest, most explosive moment in the monarchy’s history as it centers on the growing relationship between Princess Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) and Dodi Fayed (Khalid Abdalla) before their tragic car journey in Paris that rocked the entire world.

One of the most highly-anticipated new series coming to the streamer is All The Light We Cannot See (November 2), Steven Knight and Shawn Levy’s adaptation of Anthony Doerr’s best-selling novel about a blind French teenager and a German soldier whose paths collide during World War II.

The sizzle reel offers sneak peeks at new films, several from big-name directors, including David Fincher’s The Killer (November 10), starring Michael Fassbender as an assassin with creeping doubts about his chosen profession. Fincher’s latest premiered at the Venice Film Festival to great reviews, calling his adaptation of Alexis Nolent’s graphic novel a tour de force of filmmaking craft.

Another film set to make a big splash is Nyad (November 3), the first narrative feature from award-winning documentarians Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, which tells the incredible true story of long-distance swimming legend Diana Nyad (Annette Bening), who sought to become the first person to swim the 110-mile open sea journey from Cuba to Florida. The film boasts an incredibly strong cast, including Jodie Foster as Nyad’s longtime best friend and swimming coach, Bonnie Stoll.

One of the streamer’s absolute must-sees is George C. Wolfe’s Rustin (November 17), which centers, at long last, on the civil rights hero Bayard Rustin (a remarkable Colman Domingo), an openly gay activist who is finally getting the spotlight he has long deserved. Rustin was one of the driving forces behind the March on Washington and one of Martin Luther King Jr.’s key allies and sources of strength.

There’s a lot more. Check out Netflix’s November highlight reel below.

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Mahershala Ali and Julia Roberts Face the Unthinkable in “Leave the World Behind” Trailer

“The Fall of the House of Usher “ Production Designer Laurin Kelsey Reanimates Edgar Allan Poe for Netflix

“Fair Play” Writer/Director Chloe Domont Makes a Killing on Male Fragility

Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali & Co Seek Refuge at the End of the World in “Leave The World Behind” Trailer

Featured image: L-r: Elizabeth Debicki is Princess Diana in “The Crown” season 6, part 1. Courtesy Netflix / LeftBank; Colman Domingo as Bayard Rustin. Credit David Lee/Netflix.

“Fellow Travelers” Director/ Executive Producer Daniel Minahan’s Scorching Trip Through Turbulent Times

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Director and executive producer Daniel Minahan wanted to be part of Fellow Travelers as soon as he read the first script by Ron Nyswaner, an Oscar nominee for Philadelphia.

“It was a beautifully devised script. Ron saw parallels between the 1950s persecution of gay people in government and what happens in San Francisco with activism and trying to survive AIDS in the ‘80s,” said Minahan. “Ron and I worked together before [on the series Ray Donovan] and knew each other socially from Provincetown. We had been trying to find something to do; I’d sent him a novel I was trying to adapt, and he sent me a script he was developing, but we could not find a fit. As soon as I read the first script [for Fellow Travelers], I knew I wanted to be involved. Ron really had a solid idea of what it should feel like and the tone of the piece.”

Nyswaner adapted Thomas Mallon’s 2007 novel of historical fiction set in Joseph McCarthy-era Washington for Fellow Travelers, an 8-part series debuting on Paramount+ beginning October 27 and on Showtime October 29. It spans four decades in the lives of several LGBTQ characters, starting with the Lavender Scare of 1950s Washington, DC, to AIDS activism in 1980s San Francisco. But the series expands the scope of the story about political operative Hawkins Fuller (Matt Bomer) and idealistic Tim Laughlin (Jonathan Bailey), who begin a clandestine romance just as McCarthy and Roy Cohn declare war on “subversives and sexual deviants” for suspected Communist sympathies and alleged homosexuality, ruining lives and careers and sometimes triggering suicides.

Behind-the-scenes with Director Daniel Minihan in FELLOW TRAVELERS. Photo Credit: Ian Watson/SHOWTIME.

“The scope of it was intimidating,” said Minahan, whose many television directing credits include Six Feet Under, Game of Thrones, and the five-part Netflix series Halston, starring Ewan McGregor as the legendary gay fashion designer. “It was a tall order, but we had the right production designer in Anastasia Masaro and costume designer in Joseph La Corte to make it look and feel like that world. It was world-building — like Game of Thrones where you are creating four different worlds in an hour, although we shot it in Toronto, which looks nothing like Washington or San Francisco.”

 

Minahan, a Danbury, Connecticut native who divides his time between New York City and Provincetown, where he lives with his partner, artist John Dowd, served as executive producer for the entire series and directed the first two episodes. These provide the introduction to the characters, their power dynamics, and the darkening forces gathering in Washington. 

“I would have directed the entire series the way I did with Halston, but I had another commitment to shoot a film,” said Minahan. “I agreed to help set it up; we found a team, and then I went right into shooting the first two hours and setting the look for the series.”

Fellow Travelers is anchored by Bomer and Bailey, who create a fraught but passionate closeted relationship, including no-holds-barred sex scenes. “The sex was scripted very clearly, and we ran with it and developed it a bit. But when I read it, I got what Ron was after,” Minahan said. “It is about people risking everything to be who they are; their sexuality is the clearest and easiest way to dramatize that. It’s always important to me that sex scenes move the story forward, and one of the controlling ideas we had throughout was that every exchange was an exchange of power.”

 

The series includes fascinatingly complex depictions of two virulent homophobes with their own skeletons in Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn, who continued to publicly deny his homosexuality and AIDS diagnosis right up until he died in 1986 at age 59.

“I remember seeing Roy Cohn out in the ’80s when I was a student [in New York],” said Minahan. “I was in a nightclub talking with a friend, and suddenly he was staring back at [someone], like ‘what are you looking at?’ and there was Roy Cohn standing 20 feet behind me burning a hole into somebody on the dance floor.”

Minahan knew he wanted actor Will Brill to portray Cohn in Fellow Travelers.

“He’s an actor’s actor. I was watching The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and he plays [Midge Maisel’s] brother, and I immediately thought, ‘Oh my God’ and sent his photo to Ron. Chris Bauer, who plays Joe McCarthy, is very easygoing, a big guy, gregarious. We wanted McCarthy to be sexy. He’s charismatic; he’s a demagogue. We went right to both actors, and they were the only ones we saw for those roles,” he says.

“A piece is only as good as its villain, so it was important casting,” said Minahan, adding that the actors achieved the aim of showing Cohn and McCarthy as “real, fallible humans” even as they were “the worst villains you can imagine.”

 

For more films and series from Paramount and Paramount+, check out these stories:

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Featured image: (L-R): Jonathan Bailey as Tim and Matt Bomer as Hawkins “Hawk” Fuller in FELLOW TRAVELERS, “Bulletproof”. Photo Credit: Courtesy of SHOWTIME.

How “Saltburn” Production Designer Suzie Davies Outfitted the Vast Estate in Emerald Fennell’s Thriller

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Like many who worked on Saltburn, production designer Suzie Davies signed a contract promising not to reveal the location of the sprawling country house where much of the movie was shot. Writer/director Emerald Fennell wanted a centuries-old estate unidentifiable to audiences, and she found one in the English Midlands that had never been used onscreen. But a Tatler journalist sleuthed out the location a few months ago, effectively voiding the contracts. Drayton House, a leviathan with aristocratic heritage, is where Davies let her inspiration run wild, bringing Fennell’s story of class intrigue to life. 

Davies and her team had the freedom to paint, rearrange rooms, embellish gardens, and find other ways to epitomize the Catton family, an obscenely wealthy but emotionally feverish clan whose bewitching eldest son (Jacob Elordi) invites his obsequious new Oxford buddy (Barry Keoghan) home for a rambling, sordid summer. Saltburn, Drayton’s fictional counterpart, needed to telegraph the Cattons’ decadence inside and out. For Davies, who also designed Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner and Peterloo, it was a particularly lavish project. 

 

I have to assume that the process of putting together this, or any movie, is very different from the process of putting together a Mike Lee movie.

It couldn’t be more different, although my process of design has changed quite fundamentally since I’ve worked with him. That means more understanding of the actors. The actors are living in my environment, so the more I can understand their process and how their characters develop, the better. 

A lot of your work is done before the actors arrive at the set, so how do you marry everything together once they’re there?

It’s about asking the right questions of Emerald. Luckily, with this project, she was the writer as well, so it’s not like I had to go too far. So when I asked, for instance, “How do you imagine [Rosamund Pike’s character] Elsbeth’s bedroom?” I would love to have spoken to Elsbeth, the character, to find that out. I did speak to Rosamund. But the indulgence of a Mike Leigh project is I have six months whilst we’re developing to speak to the actors. On this, I might have six minutes. So, it’s asking her how she imagines Elsbeth’s room. Did they have separate bedrooms? Did she design it? In what year? How long have they been married? It was about the color palettes as well. Those beats are as important as the stage direction, which, because Emerald’s written it, there’s no separation. When you’re scouting, it’s easy to know which direction she’s going. 

Suzie Davies on the set of “Saltburn.” Courtesy MGM and Amazon Studios

When you first read the script, what immediately sprung to mind in terms of how Saltburn the house should look?

I started immediately pulling images together from all over the place, like country houses. I’ve done lots of period films, and it felt a bit like a period film. It felt like a story could have taken place centuries ago. It was about seeing those period elements in quite a contemporary way. A lot of big National Trust places have really interesting modern art exhibitions, so it’s about bringing a bit of modernism to these aspects. I expected to go scouting for this house for maybe a month, but we probably found it in a week. We found it very quickly.

Barry Keoghan is Oliver Quick in “Saltburn.” Courtesy of MGM and Amazon Studios.

What reference points — photographs, paintings, films — did you use? 

Caravaggio is a main player in this film. He often ends up being used as a reference in film because of the cinematic lighting that he used, the intense color, and the darkness mixed with the light. We knew this was going to be quite intense, often sinister, silly, frivolous — all those sorts of emotions. Caravaggio brought that, and that gave us a bit of sincerity and authenticity to the history of his family. We went through the Pre-Raphaelites, with all the silly ponds and all the frivolous nature, and all the way to high-end contemporary art. It was the juxtaposition of having this beautiful, ancient artwork with a purple dress for the parties. We’re often precious about big oil paintings, like, “Oh, you can’t touch them.” We wanted them to feel like they were almost melting, that someone had put a cigarette out on them. Not very respectful. Really lived-in.

Suzie Davies on the set of “Saltburn.” Courtesy MGM and Amazon Studios

Did you walk through Drayton House before putting together designs?

When we went to the house, it became apparent that that’s where we were going to film it. And then, we were able to manipulate the script to suit elements of the house. The family who own it were very generous to us. They allowed us to augment some rooms, so there’s a run of rooms that I changed around completely. The bathroom isn’t a real bathroom — that was a bedroom. So that’s all fake, but it was in the right place to shoot out of the windows and see the parties and things like that. Often, in stately homes, you can’t touch anything, but we were painting walls and changing fabrics. For the gardens, the maze was a bit of a collaboration between construction and post-production. 

Was the maze built out already?

No, we made the maze. There’s a world-renowned maze designer called Adrian Fisher. He was great because we wanted it to be real. We went through quite a few designs to work out how we’d do it, so it was a perfect filming collaboration of real construction, CG, post-production, editing, and a real designer all mashed up. 

We know from Promising Young Woman that Emerald is very particular about the color schemes of her films. What did you and Emerald decide the core color scheme of Saltburn’s interior should be?

Red and green was sort of our go-to, but not on the nose. Amélie is so famous for its red and green, and it was slightly adjusting those colors. It was about getting the intensity. Even in Felix’s bedroom, which I think we see very fleetingly, his bed is like a blueish green. The artwork that we were using has that, too. There’s always this red thread going through. Red is such a beautiful color to play with, especially in cinematic terms. It’s sexy, it’s scary, it’s intense. Every description of the color red was in that film: It’s frivolous, it tastes good. It was about using all our senses, I guess. 

Jacob Elordi as Felix Catton in “Saltburn.” Courtesy MGM and Amazon Studios.

As the film gets darker and more sinister, how did you shift the visual palette to correspond? 

It’s a collaboration, with the cinematography becoming darker. As the story unfolds and we get into the party [at the end of the film], that’s when we can go a little bit more intense. I guess we wanted it to feel more distorted and more blurring, like that painting is melting under the heat of the story and the goings-on. Everything starts merging together. 

Barry Keoghan is Oliver Quick in “Saltburn.” Courtesy of MGM and Amazon Studios.

The austerity of the house itself mixed with some of the loud, poppy colors and the candy on the tables reminded me of Marie Antoinette, the Sofia Coppola movie.

I probably did reference that in some of our images. I even looked at The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover because that’s so strong with the colors. I think that was too far for us, but it was a bit of inspiration, especially with the over-the-topness of the food — particularly what we call the seafood scene in the big dining room with all those lovely bright-colored candles. That might have been an Emerald decision because I think we had white candles, and she was like, “No, let’s go big.” So we had very tacky sweets with octopus hanging over this gorgeous cut-glass crystal tableware. On set, my art department was constantly getting called all the time for brighter sweets. We had to go down to the sweet shop for more. 

There’s that great shot of Barry Keoghan at the table surrounded by candles with his reflection on the glass.

Interestingly, I’ve got images from some of the scouting we did of Emerland or [cinematographer] Linus [Sandgren] or a crew member being put into a position for a shot we wanted to try to get. And they’re in the film. She knew when we were scouting. I’ve got a picture of Linus lying on the floor in the bedroom, à la Jacob Elordi, with the sun coming through. She knew what she wanted.

Barry Keoghan is Oliver Quick in “Saltburn.” Courtesy of MGM and Amazon Studios.

The actors stayed at the house during production so Emerald could create a summer camp feel. Did you and your team?

We were all very close in the village. We all had various houses or hotels. There’s a great pub in the village, so at the end of filming, that’s where we’d go. They must have made a fortune from us that year. They were delightful because it’s quite a sleepy little village, and then you get 100 crew members rocking up. It was fantastic. We had a really hot summer in the UK, which is slightly unheard of, although maybe not now with climate change. But it was one of those jobs that was pretty special. We were quite a tight crew. If the director’s got a good vibe, then it feeds through — and everyone wanted to support the film. You often think you’re doing something special, but I think we knew this film was something different. We were a unit, and it was a really lovely, liberating feeling. 

Suzie Davies and the crew on the set of “Saltburn.” Courtesy MGM and Amazon Studios.

Tell me there was a decadent wrap party at the house when you finished.

It would have been nice. No, there wasn’t. Our schedule didn’t allow it. We had lots of mini-wrap parties at the pub at the end of the day. 

Saltburn is in select theaters and streams on Amazon Prime on November 17 and opens wide on Thanksgiving Day.

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Featured image: The Saltburn estate. Courtesy MGM and Amazon Studios. 

Mahershala Ali and Julia Roberts Face the Unthinkable in “Leave the World Behind” Trailer

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In the official trailer for writer/director Sam Esmail’s Leave the World Behind, we open on a married couple in disparate moments of readiness. At the foot of the bed, packing a bag, is Amanda Sanford (Julia Roberts), informing her husband Clay (Ethan Hawke), lying prone under the covers, that she’s gone ahead and booked them a beautiful house by the beach and is prepping their suitcases so that he’s left with little reason to say no to the trip. Amanda’s thought of just about everything save for the fact that their trip is fated for disaster. Esmail’s film is adapted from Rumaan Alam’s sizzling 2020 novel centered on two families facing the prospect of complete societal collapse while sequestered together in a house in the Hamptons. For Amanda, Clay, and their two kids, however, their Hamptons getaway sounds like the ideal way to unwind. 

Things start to go pear-shaped in the most mundane of ways—no signal on the TV, the Wi-Fi’s not working—but then a knock at the door in the middle of the night really starts to unsettle the Sanfords. Enter two strangers—G.H. (Mahershala Ali) and his daughter Ruth (Myha’la)—who come bearing bad news. There’s been a cyberattack, and they’ve arrived seeking refuge. And before the Standfords can balk at the likelihood of any of this being real, G.H. reveals that he actually owns the house, a fact that Amanda is a little too eager to find suspicious. 

Leave the World Behind is both a techno-thriller and a tale of the ties of humanity that should bind us together but often fray when we need them most. It’s a potent conceit, as it was when Alam’s novel dropped in the middle of the pandemic, and its story about very personal, family-to-family level upheaval while society falls apart just outside the front door felt all too resonant. With Mr. Robot creator Sam Esmail helming the adaptation and the sensational cast (which includes Kevin Bacon has a small but important role), you couldn’t ask for a better collection of talents to tell a more harrowing tale. 

Check out the trailer below. Leave the World Behind hits select theaters on November 22 and streams on Netflix on December 8:

Here’s the official synopsis from Netflix:

In this apocalyptic thriller from award-winning writer and director Sam Esmail (Mr. Robot), Amanda (Academy Award winner Julia Roberts) and her husband Clay (Academy Award nominee Ethan Hawke), rent a luxurious home for the weekend with their kids, Archie (Charlie Evans) and Rose (Farrah Mackenzie). Their vacation is soon upended when two strangers — G.H. (Academy Award winner Mahershala Ali) and his daughter Ruth (Myha’la) — arrive in the night, bearing news of a mysterious cyberattack and seeking refuge in the house they claim is theirs. The two families reckon with a looming disaster that grows more terrifying by the minute, forcing everyone to come to terms with their places in a collapsing world. Based on the National Book Award-nominated novel by Rumaan Alam, LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND is produced by Esmail Corp, Red Om Films, and executive produced by Higher Ground Productions.

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Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali & Co Seek Refuge at the End of the World in “Leave The World Behind” Trailer

Featured image: LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND (2023) Myha’la as Ruth, Mahershala Ali as G.H., Ethan Hawke as Clay and Julia Roberts as Amanda. CR: JoJo Whilden/NETFLIX

“Mission: Impossible 8” Gets New Title, Release Date, And Longer IMAX Run

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There has been a flurry of calendar moves and even one very big title change announcement as the entertainment industry absorbs strike-related delays and the studios reconsider upcoming dates. With a new meeting on the SAG-AFTRA strike set for today, there are hopes that the impasse can be solved and the movie and TV business can get back to action. In the meantime, Paramount Pictures has announced that their upcoming Mission: Impossible movie is being moved nearly an entire year, from June 28, 2024, to May 23, 2025. They’ve also revealed that the final installment in their epic Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning two-parter will be getting a new title, dropping the Dead Reckoning Part Two for something presumably shorter.

The good news for writer/director Christopher McQuarrie and star and producer Tom Cruise is their next Mission: Impossible movie will get far more time in IMAX theaters than Dead Reckoning Part One did. The former didn’t get much time on premium screens due to Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, which enjoyed a huge run on IMAX screens through the summer. For Cruise’s next Mission, the film will enjoy an exclusive three-week IMAX run, which is precisely the type of theatrical environment this franchise was built for.

Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.

Another notable calendar move is the Quiet Place prequel A Quiet Place: Day One, which will now arrive in theaters on June 28, 2024, rather than its original premiere date of March 8, 2024. Meanwhile, John Krasinski’s fantasy-comedy IF, starring himself, Ryan Reynolds, Alan Kim, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge, will actually be moving up from May 24, 2024, to May 17, 2024. It’s not the largest leap forward in time, but it does give Krasinski’s film some distance from what’s looking like a big Memorial Day in 2024 when George Miller’s highly-anticipated Mad Max: Fury Road prequel Furiosa bows, as well as Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes and Garfield.

For more on Mission: Impossible, check out these stories:

“Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” is Now Available to Stream

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“Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” Production Designer Gary Freeman Creates an Artificially Intelligent Palace

“Mission: Impossible 7” Director Christopher McQuarrie Reveals He Considered De-Aging Tom Cruise

Featured image: Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.

Director Shawn Levy on Synchronicity Between His “Deadpool 3” and Secret “Star Wars” Movie

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Director Shawn Levy is currently promoting All The Light We Cannot See, his Netflix limited series that’s adapted from Anthony Doerr’s best-selling novel of the same name. Levy is one of the busiest men in the business, with season 5 of Stranger Things, Deadpool 3, and a secret Star Wars movie all on his to-do list. The SAG-AFTRA strikes have slowed down production on the latter three titles, but when it comes to the two movies, Levy remains not only confident in their eventual continuation but excited in the amount of creative freedom and flexibility he has to pursue those projects by the light of his own particular passions.

For Levy’s Star Wars movie—a project we know so little about we don’t even have the bare bones of a storyline or even a time period—the director revealed to Variety that Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy has been adamant that he make a movie true to himself.

“When Kathy Kennedy brought me on board to make a Star Wars movie, her central mandate to me was ‘I want a Shawn Levy movie. I want a story and a tone that reflects you and your taste and what you bring to your movies — with a Star Wars story,’” Levy told Variety. “So I have felt extremely empowered. We are in the early days, unfortunately, because the development process was abruptly paused [due to the WGA strike], but I feel very empowered to trust my instincts in the development of this story and movie.”

Considering Levy’s skill at teasing out emotional stakes and deep connections no matter the insanity surrounding his characters—think of the sweet-natured lunacy of Free Guy or any of the gangbusters episodes of Stranger Things he’s delivered—the idea of a Levy Star Wars movie is intriguing. In fact, Levy told Variety that he thinks his work on the Ryan Reynolds/Hugh Jackman team-up in Deadpool 3, in which Reynolds’ titular, chatty, foul-mouthed superhero comes face-to-face with the legendary Wolverine, might double as great prep for his trip to a galaxy far, far away.

L-r: Ryan Reynolds is Wade Wilson/Deadpool and Hugh Jackman is Logan/Wolverine in “Deadpool 3.” Courtesy Ryan Reynolds/Marvel Studios

“The experience that I’m currently having with Marvel on Deadpool is showing me firsthand that it is indeed really possible to feel empowered and personal about making a movie within a universe that is bigger than any one film,” Levy told Variety. “My Deadpool movie is turning out to be exactly what Ryan [Reynolds] and I had hoped when we started off. So I’m going into the development of my Star Wars movie with a similar optimism and faith that my instincts will be allowed to lead the way.”

On the likelihood that his buddy Adam Driver could be involved in his Star Wars movie if it was set before the events of J.J. Abrams’s The Force Awakens, Levy was quick to strike the elusive posture of a Jedi who prefers to remain in the shadows. For now.

“Your words, not mine! As you know, Adam is a buddy, and I’ve always been a huge fan of Kylo Ren. But no comment.”

Levy’s All The Light We Cannot See streams on Netflix on November 2.

For more on Deadpool 3 and all things Star Wars, check out these stories:

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Featured image: NEW YORK, NEW YORK – FEBRUARY 10: Shawn Levy and Ryan Reynolds attend the opening night of “The Music Man” at Winter Garden Theatre on February 10, 2022 in New York City. (Photo by Arturo Holmes/Getty Images)

“Saturday Night Live” Thrives in Bad Bunny “The Age of Discovery” Spanish Sketch

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Bad Bunny brought his multifaceted talents to Saturday Night Live this past weekend as host and musical guest in a buoyant episode that made excellent use of not only his Spanish but Spanish-speaking SNL cast members, too. One sketch in particular, “The Age of Discovery,” finds Bad Bunny playing the King of Spain in the 16th century alongside his son, the prince (Marcello Hernández). They’re seated in the throne room, eager to hear about the incredible riches, things like silk and spices, that their explorers have brought back from China. Those explorers (Mikey Day, speaking passable Spanish, and Fred Armisen, fluent) have some incredible news; however—they never made it to China. Instead, they bumped into an entirely new world and returned with a king’s ransom of magical beasts, incredible foods, and more.

What follows is a series of hilarious astonishments as the two explorers reveal one New World horror after another—a turkey (we’ll leave it to the SNL crew to explain what they believe this bizarre animal is afflicted with), a llama (like a horse, but worse, the prince complains), a tomato (looks like an apple, but is “all good inside!”), a pumpkin (the prince and the king are convinced it’s diseased), and tobacco, which is packed into a cigar and looks like, well, we’ll again leave that to the comedians to describe.

It was a night of big laughs and surprise cameos, with Lady Gaga, Mick Jagger, and Pedro Pascal making surprise appearances. Bad Bunny is only the second Latin artist to host the show—the first was Desi Arnaz back in 1977. He’s performed on SNL before, however, appearing in an episode during the pandemic when it was “Saturday Night Live at Home,” and he was the musical guest during an episode in 2021 hosted by Regé-Jean Page.

SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE — “Bad Bunny” Episode 1846 — Pictured: (l-r) Pedro Pascal and host Bad Bunny during the Monologue on Saturday, October 21, 2023 — (Photo by: Will Heath/NBC)

This past Saturday night, however, was all Bunny all the time, and the superstar made the most of his performance.

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Featured image: “Bad Bunny” Episode 1846 — Pictured: Host & musical guest Bad Bunny during Promos in Studio 8H on Tuesday, October 17, 2023 — (Photo by: Rosalind O’Connor/NBC)

“Lessons in Chemistry” Makeup Department Head Miho Suzuki Captures the Pressure Cooker of Being a 1950s Woman

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Chemical reactions can be calculated and quantified, but matters of the heart are far less predictable. When scientist Elizabeth Zott (Brie Larson) finds herself pressed toward domesticity from all sides, she realizes that the way to pursue her passions, empower women, and advocate for equality may be through the kitchen after all. Lessons in Chemistry – based on the hit novel by Bonnie Garmus – follows Zott’s evolution from student to TV star.

Makeup was a mark of femininity in the 1950s, but Zott rejects conventional women’s roles. Makeup department head Miho Suzuki designed a path for Larson’s character to evolve from a university student through motherhood into a very public career.

“She can’t afford all the makeup like other ladies,” Suzuki said of Zott’s time as a lab tech. “Also, she wasn’t self-absorbed about how she looked. Her importance wasn’t in that. Just so simple, a beautiful, glowing woman. She doesn’t care about how she looks. Not trying to impress the guys or anything like that. I really enjoyed the contrast between those times and then she became more womanly and a mother, and she became this TV show host. Of course, she’s getting makeup or hair done, but also really showcases her growth as a woman. I was able to tell her story through the makeup, so that was really good fun.” 

As a student and chemist, Zott is barefaced and practical. She declares that her routine involves avoiding beauty products to avoid hazards and contaminants in the lab.

“I used her own sheen, her own flush for the blush,” Suzuki revealed. “I focused on the skincare. Very, very minimal foundation and concealer. Just really enhance what she has. Just brush up the eyebrows, not really drawing anything, lip balm, things like that. I just really made an effort not to hide what she has.”

Brie Larson in “Lessons in Chemistry.” Streaming now on Apple TV+

Many of Zott’s female coworkers indulge in all the latest makeup styles, but she remains resistant until a forward-facing opportunity calls. Combining her two passions of chemistry and cooking, she becomes the host of a hit show, “Supper at Six.” Zott is still focused on breaking through with substance, but she begins to discover her personal style. At first, the change doesn’t flatter her.  

Episode 8. Brie Larson in “Lessons in Chemistry,” premiering October 13, 2023 on Apple TV+.
Episode 8. Stephanie Koenig, Kevin Sussman and Brie Larson in “Lessons in Chemistry,” now streaming on Apple TV+.

“It’s almost like they created this dream woman for this TV host position, but then she’s like, ‘Oh my god, I can’t move. The dress doesn’t move. I feel very uncomfortable,’” Suzuki observed. “She’s wearing pink lipstick and blue eyeshadow and big eyelashes. She finds it very odd and awkward, so she decides, ‘OK, I’m going to do this.’ From that point on, she really carries that personality.”

Eventually, Zott settles into her newfound fame and grows into a comfortable makeup routine. Suzuki was inspired by the elegance of Grace Kelly in designing Zott’s TV host phase.

Episode 8. Stephanie Koenig, Kevin Sussman and Brie Larson in “Lessons in Chemistry,” now streaming on Apple TV+.

“Just a simple eye, simple, beautiful red lip, and then her presence is there more than the makeup,” she explained. “That’s what I wanted to do for her. You really connect with the character when she feels like who she is. She is more receptive to the makeup and hair, but she still loves how she looks. She’s in control, and she is still who she is. You can see those phases.” 

In preparing her designs for Lessons in Chemistry, Suzuki studied mid-century makeup trends. To add another layer of authenticity to the characters, she even narrowed her reference materials geographically.

“I researched about the 50s, but I specifically focused on being regional,” Suzuki said. “The story happened in Los Angeles, and Brie’s character, Elizabeth Zott, went to UCLA. So, I started studying yearbooks from UCLA. Just getting a feel of what students looked like at the time, teachers looked like at the time, things like that.”

Long before HD resolution and YouTube makeup tutorials, technologies for both television and makeup were more limited than today. To capture the essence of the golden glamour of Hollywood, Suzuki turned to products of the era.

“Obviously, at that time, it was very velvety skin. Not so shiny or glowy. I think that was probably the quality of the makeup at the time. Very limited. I really focused on the skin texture to be as similar as possible, but also trying to find the Revlon lipstick from that decade,” Suzuki laughed. “Of course, I didn’t use the lipstick that was made in the 50s, but they have recreations of those colors, and you are still able to buy those these days. We got so excited, so we got those and used those authentic colors.”

Of course, what’s seen on camera is typically much more polished than behind the scenes. Elizabeth is endearingly transparent in her failures with her audience, but she endures even greater struggles off-screen. Through some of the most emotional scenes in the series, Suzuki’s goal was to support the actors and give their performances room to shine. There are artistic and practical considerations to those dramatic moments.

Episode 8. Stephanie Koenig, Kevin Sussman and Brie Larson in “Lessons in Chemistry,” now streaming on Apple TV+.

“Mascara should be waterproof and things like that, so it doesn’t get messy. If it’s purposely messy, that’s fine, too. It has to be suitable for the scene,” Suzuki explained. “I think those things that she goes through where the emotions are very heavy, like the giving birth scene is not so much crying, more like a lot of sweat. I think it really helped that she really didn’t have much [makeup] on, so she’s able to really put the emotion out.”

On set in the makeup trailer where they began each day together, Suzuki had a charming method to set the tone. She created a space to help Larson fully envision Elizabeth Zott as an entertainment icon of the era.

“I decorated that room with 50s inspiration photos. I had pictures of Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, younger days of Brigitte Bardot, and black and white photos of scientists,” Suzuki revealed. “This whole area is inspiration pictures. Then, each day, I took continuity shots and printed them out, and kept sneaking Brie’s photos into it. So, every day she came in, she turned into a character in that chair. She comes in the early morning, sleepy, then looks at the picture and sees herself where I snuck in pictures of her among Grace Kelly and all those ladies. I think that was very helpful to her. I just felt like a transformation moment emotionally. That was really fun.”


Brie Larson and Lewis Pullman in “Lessons in Chemistry,” premiering October 13,
2023 on Apple TV+.

Known for portraying powerful women, Larson had just finished filming The Marvels when Lessons in Chemistry began. Suzuki was Larson’s personal makeup artist for the film.

“Creating two completely different characters on her, I just had a lot of fun. Brie is just so beautiful, so it’s like a dream canvas to paint on,” Suzuki shared. “One is a superhero who doesn’t age, and the other is a woman who struggles through so much. She fights through the 50s, a difficult time for women. A pioneer, really. Women today are able to do what they love to do, right? I’m choking up just thinking about it. It’s very emotional.”

 

Lessons in Chemistry is now available to stream on Apple+.

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Martin Scorsese on Finding Truth in Tragedy in “Killers of the Flower Moon”

“Killers of the Flower Moon” Cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto Illuminates Martin Scorsese’s Twisted Tale

Featured image: Episode 8. Brie Larson in “Lessons in Chemistry,” premiering October 13, 2023 on Apple TV+.

“Killers of the Flower Moon” Casting Directors Ellen Lewis and Rene Haynes on Their Historic Oklahoma Casting Call

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With its prodigiously detailed and complex production, long running time, and sprawling cast, Killers of the Flower Moon (in theaters now) cut no corners in telling the true story about members of Oklahoma’s oil-rich Osage Nation who were systematically murdered in the 1920s by white men eager to inherit “head rights” worth millions of dollars through marriage and trickery. To surround Leo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro’s duplicitous usurpers with authentic Native American talent, director Martin Scorsese enlisted his longtime casting director Ellen Lewis (The Irishman, The Departed, The Aviator). She, in turn, re-teamed with Rene Haynes, a specialist in Indigenous actors who previously helped Lewis cast Scott Frank’s 2017 western series Godless.

Lewis says, “There was never any question that every person who played a native character would be native.” The movie’s breakthrough performance comes from Lily Gladstone, who grew up on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana and stars opposite DiCaprio as his character’s clever Osage wife, Mollie.

Speaking from Los Angeles a few hours before the Killers of the Flower Moon premiere, Lewis and Haynes explain how they introduced Gladstone to Scorsese, recount their massive Oklahoma open call, and explain why so many country singers, including Jason Isbell, show up in supporting roles.

 

Lily Gladstone really shines in her performance of this complicated character, Mollie but a lot of people probably didn’t know who she was until now. Where did you find her?

Rene: I met Lily through a film we did many years ago called Winter in the Blood. Throughout this open call, Lily had been reading all the other persons’ lines. I kept looking over at her, and the next day, I told the director. “I don’t know why we’re still looking for this role; we should just cast Lily.” From that point, she did amazing work in some small things. Then Ellen and I both saw her in Kelly Reichardt’s 2016 film Certain Women.

 

Ellen: She made a real impression. We were seeing other actresses, but I’d read the novel and knew that Mollie was, in some ways, the heart of this story. Seeing someone of Lily’s talent and depth, when Marty asked me, “What are we doing for Mollie?” I said, “I think we’re going to be okay.”

Meaning. . .

Ellen: You’ll be seeing someone that I think is very right for this role. So I read Lily, and then she did a Zoom with Marty and Leo. When it was over, Leo called Marty and said, “We’ve got our Mollie.”

 

L-r: Martin Scorsese, Lily Gladstone, and Leonardo DiCaprio on the set of “Flowers of the Killer Moon.” Courtesy Apple TV+

You then need to build a whole family around Lily Gladstone’s character. Was it important to find actors who seemed believable as blood relatives?

Ellen: It had to be cohesive.

Rene: By the time we started filling those roles, we knew who our Mollie was. I have a pet peeve about families not working together [on screen], so one of my favorite things is to build out a world and then create a family within that world.

Costume designer Jacqueline West standing behind JaNae Collins, Lily Gladstone, Cara Jade Myers and Jillian Dion in “Killers of the Flower Moon,” premiering in theaters around the world on October 20, 2023. Courtesy Apple TV+.

Mollie’s sisters are totally believable, and then there’s her mother, Lizzie, played by Tantoo Cardinal. Was Mr. Scorsese already familiar with her?

Ellen: Marty saw Tantoo in [1991 Bruce Beresford historical drama] Black Robe and loved her.

Rene: I’ve known Tantoo since we worked together in Dances With Wolves. For indigenous projects, she’s the go-to actor of her generation. Here, she grounds us in the time before all this wealth and everything happened to the Osage.

Ellen: As the matriarch of this family, Tantoo adds such gravitas, showing what’s been done to this community.

Leonardo DiCaprio is Ernest Burkhart and Tantoo Cardinal is Lizzie Q. Courtesy Apple TV+

Maybe it goes without saying that Robert De Niro would play the heavy in this movie, but I’ll ask anyway: did you consider any other actors for the role of Bill Hale?

Ellen: It was always going to be De Niro, and I think it’s one of his most thrilling performances. He’s so understated, so dangerous, so menacing without going over the top.

 

Jesse Plemons shows up a couple of hours into the film as FBI Agent Tom White. How did he get cast?

Ellen: Marty got to know Jesse in The Irishman, where he was fantastic, so we didn’t really have to talk about anybody else.

What’s with all the musicians? You cast Jason Isbell, Sturgill Simpson, and Jack White in supporting roles, and they seem to fit right in.

Ellen: I just thought country western singers would have a reality and a simplicity to what they did that would help tell this story, and they’re mostly from the South. It was the pandemic, so I called agents who represent musicians and said, “Send me anybody who’s interested in acting.” Obviously, the most important thing was that they fit into this era, 1920s Oklahoma. It is kind of funny that there are like seven musicians in the movie, like Charlie Musselwhite! He’s a phenomenal old bluesman originally from Oklahoma, so was very familiar with this story.

Both of you went to Oklahoma in search of native American talent. What were you looking for, and what did you find?

Rene: We were looking for everyone. We reached out to the Osage Nation, set up a massive open call, and saw about 2500 people.

Wow! 2,500 people? When did you go there?

Rene: It was November 2019. As people lined up and came through, I spoke to every single person, and if they were even remotely right for a role, I’d send them over to Ellen in another room with some generic sides, and they’d read. There are 62 credited characters who are indigenous, and all but 14 are people who never acted before until we found them in this open call. I want to add that I think the open call was so well attended because of this trust that had been established by Martin Scorsese with the Osage Nation over a period of months before we got there.

Ellen: Marty really laid the groundwork before we got to Oklahoma, promising that he would tell their story as honestly and accurately as possible.

Lily Gladstone and Martin Scorsese in “Killers of the Flower Moon,” premiering October 20, 2023 on Apple TV+.

Yancey Red Corn is a formidable presence in his role of Chief Bonnicastle. What’s his story?

Yancey is one of the people we met through the open call. He’s a natural.

Getting back to the sheer scale of those open auditions in Oklahoma, after you met with 2,500 people in six days, were you reeling?

Ellen: I wasn’t tired; I was exhilarated. Learning about people, learning about their families — that’s the great thing about casting; you’re figuring out what world this is. With Killers of the Flower Moon it’s such an amazing and tragic story to film, so to be able to bring the faces to this story felt like an amazing experience in your life that you’ll never have again. Here we were in November 2019, able to show Marty all these people [representing] a lot of this community. Then, you just start putting the pieces of the puzzle together.

Rene: And you can really feel the soul in this film because many people who came in through those open calls weren’t just interested in being in a movie. These were people who had this tragedy happen to their families, and they’re still feeling the repercussions.

Makeup department head Thomas Nellen and costume designer Jacqueline West finalize William Belleau’s look on set Photo: Melinda Sue Gordon/Apple TV+

You have to get ready for the Killers of the Flower Moon premiere, but before you go, is there anything else you’d like to add?

Ellen: We really appreciate talking to The Credits because casting is a somewhat elusive craft, and people may not understand that we’re the first people on a movie working with the director. People might sit at home: “Oh, I have an idea here.” But casting is very delicate and nuanced. With Killers in particular, working with Rene and helping to bring the faces in this story to life was a real gift.

 

For more on Killers of the Flower Moon, check out these stories:

How Osage Tradition Influenced the Hair & Makeup in “Killers of the Flower Moon”

“Killers of the Flower Moon” Costume Designer Jacqueline West on the Power of the Osage Blanket

How “Killers of the Flower Moon” Production Designer Jack Fisk Created 1920s Oklahoma

Costume Designer Ruth E. Carter on Stitching Together Her Legendary Career

“Killers of the Flower Moon” Cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto Illuminates Martin Scorsese’s Twisted Tale

Featured image: JaNae Collins, Lily Gladstone, Cara Jade Myers and Jillian Dion in “Killers of the Flower Moon,” premiering in theaters around the world on October 20, 2023.