The scripts is one of the greatest conceptual scripts I've ever seen. It's a script that was so unique, so original, and yet it got not acclaim. To me it was no question that it was the greatest script of the year. To this day people are talking about it, but they forget no one paid any attention to it at the time. The execution of the script, there were great people in it. It was a difficult movie to shoot because we shot in winter outdoors. If you ever get to go to Puxatawney, you should go, it is one of the few things that is BETTER than advertised. It's really something to see. But doing the movie, shooting the scenes over and over, it's like an acting challenge. It's like doing a play a...
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It was a blast. First movie I ever did. Major memories: Danny McBride and I watching the Tyra Banks Show at lunch everyday and the stuntman breaking his leg for real in the opening scene!
I'm a big Woody Allen fan. I'm a big Alexander Payne fan, Paul Thomas Anderson... Soderbergh... but probably Woody more than anybody. People are calling TOP FIVE "Woody-ish" but if you're not stealing from Woody, you're not doing anything, you know? If you're not stealing from the Beatles, you're not making music!
I like making short films. You can do anything you want in a short film because it doesn’t have the weight of a feature [film] where every moment has to serve the entire film.
If you have a weird little idea you can just go out and make a short film about it and people can watch it for a short time and then move on to whatever the next thing is they’re doing in their lives.
So I just always encourage people to make short films because it’s the one thing in film that you can always do. There are people laying all over the streets who are great and qualified and talented filmmakers, directors of photography and editors who have nothing to do and they are always eager to jump on a project wit...
Oh ! Oh ! Humphrey. Cary Grant. Ida Lupino. Joan Fontaine. Charles Laughton. Myrna Loy. Carole Lombard. James Mason!!!!!!! We don't have enough time to play this game. Jason Robards!
Well probably the most horrifying thing was that there was something called Nero Edict that was distributed by the Fuhrer, Hitler, which said that if the Reich should fall, or if Hitler was killed or taken, that all the art that was stolen should be destroyed. And a fair amount of the art was burned, things were burned that will never be returned, a lot was burned even before the Nero Edict because of the modern art, that was degenerate.
In the hunt for the art, they found hidden in the salt mines where the art was hidden, they found the ENTIRE gold supply of Germany.
ENTIRE. Like they had moved their gold, their Fort Knox, into a mine, and this small group of guys searching for art in a m...
It was a joy. I didn't have to deal with any of the pressures and anxieties that I'm sure are a constant over there. Stepping off an elevator into a lobby with a giant MARVEL logo is already insane, it feels like you're being brought into the Pentagon. Then to finally meet the mucky mucks over there like Kevin Feige was so refreshing and uplifting....I've been pitching and babbling about high concept stuff for twenty years and I'd gotten so used to this dichotomy of the "suits," who loved sports and couldn't wait to leave work and who barely cared about the medium, versus the writers, who were the only nerds on a movie, constantly irritating the suits with their logical points about the orig...
I like the very moment when you think of a great idea. I also like the first time you show an audience the film, but only if it works. That also can be the worst moment of your life.
He goes, "Yeah, I approve, 99.9 percent." And I'm like, "Wow, and what's the 0.1 percent?" And you think he's going to say, "You know, I never said that," or whatever, and he goes — director to director — he goes, "Yeah, James, I think you should look at lighting in the beginning of [the] movie." And I'm like, "Oh man, I'll tell my cinematographer to watch The Room for pointers."
But then we realize only later that he had been wearing his shades through the whole movie, so it's like, "Yeah, of course the lighting is off." ...
I realized in that screening ... when [the audience was] cheering for him, they were cheering his story. They were cheering him on and the will it took to get his mov...
It was incredible. The most exciting condensed period of my life and I can't imagine I'll ever do anything more exciting and I'm actually fine with that -- I don't know what could top that fantasy-camp of a filmmaking experience. The only stressful part was when we'd all go out drinking after a day on set, and I'd ask Quentin Tarantino a question, and he'd start to answer, and I'd feel this enormous pressure to REMEMBER EVERY SINGLE SYLLABLE because film history was literally being dictated to my brain, and I was the only witness, and I was two drinks in and feared I wasn't going to remember a sentence that a friend or historian would ask me for someday. It was the coolest thing ever, quite ...
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Related posts tagged 'Acting'
Well, we didn't part well. I was sort of ambitious thinking that I could hire someone that had the intelligence to do a job but didn't have necessarily speech or couldn't quite hear or spoke in sign language. She was a bright person and witty but she had never been away from her home before and even though I tried to accommodate more than I understood when I first hired her, she was very young in her emotional self and the emotional component of being away from her home was lacking. I tried my best, but I was working all day. She was lovely and very smart, but there's a lot of frustration when you meet people who can't speak well. Being completely disabled in that area causes a great amount ...
NO I do not improvise on the set of Breaking Bad. I don't need to. I approach it as a classically trained actor. I watch James Lipton interview someone, then I read the script, then I memorize the script, then I watch more James Lipton, then I put my make-ups on, then I take them off, then I act my pants off. Then, in post, they put pants back on me. The expense of putting pants back on me in post is killing the show. Send me pants, save Breaking Bad!
someone asked "what movie was the most fun to act in" and deleted their comment, so here goes:
Well, I did a film with Jim Jarmusch called Broken Flowers, but I really enjoyed that movie. I enjoyed the script that he wrote. He asked me if I could do a movie, and I said "I gotta stay home, but if you make a movie that i could shoot within one hour of my house, I'll do it."
So he found those locations. And I did the movie.
And when it was done, I thought "this movie is so good, I thought I should stop." I didn't think I could do any better than Broken Flowers, it's a film that is completely realized, and beautiful, and I thought I had done all I could do to it as an actor. And then 6-7 mont...
I think I am sometimes a poster child for arrested development in terms of I'm fascinated with toys and games. And I'm spontaneous. But no food fights. I'm gluten free. No, not really.
It's hard to pick, it's like saying pick your favorite child, I can't. I like doing both comedies and dramas, so it's very difficult to say which one I prefer. I've been very blessed to have had the chance to explore such a variety of characters.
BLACK SWAN used to be the most physically demanding part I'd ever done, until JUPITER ASCENDING. We trained for 3 months before production, and I learned how to be in en pointe, and how to be a ballerina. And then for JUPITER, you do maximum amounts of wirework training every day. So for BLACK SWAN, I trained by dancing every day for 3 months, and learning how to get en pointe in 3 months. Ultimately, it was all about learning how to pretend to be a ballerina. And I mimicked my ballet instructor more than anything.
You may find out about my experiences on There Will Be Blood via my hilarious standup special LABORING UNDER DELUSIONS or Matt Gourley's amazing podcast I WAS THERE TOO.
I would do it, but I’d have to be a Seinfeld or a Ray Romano, being myself. Imagine me crying on TV. That wouldn’t work. I did an audition once where my dad died in the script, and I was like ‘uh, dad, you’re dead.’ They were like ‘get out of here.’
The Joe Dirt wig was itchy. And one time, I walked away from the set at a TV studio when we were doing some Dennis Miller stuff, and I got lost, and I had my janitor's uniform on, and the security guard wouldn't let me back into where I was supposed to go, and I didn't have a cell phone, so I had to sit there for 15 minutes until some PA came to look for me, and I had to explain to them that I was dressed as a janitor with a wig on, and that was an actual story, that sounds fake but it was funny to me. Long story short: I loved the wig, I thought it was hilarious, it was hard to wear all summer but it cracks me up. I think it's in some vault somewhere in the Smithsonian right now, surrounded...
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