Interviews

Moment of Truth

waking_sleeping_top1.jpgWelcome back to Moment of Truth, Movieline’s weekly spotlight on the best in nonfiction cinema. This week, we hear from the filmmakers behind Waking Sleeping Beauty, which was opens March 26 in limited release.

The riveting documentary Waking Sleeping Beauty is a film that probably shouldn’t exist under virtually any or all circumstances. The behind-the-scenes story of the renaissance at Walt Disney Animation between 1984 and 1994 is dense with candid insights from the animators and studio bosses — including Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Roy Disney — who were there at the time, and the truths it reveals about the ego and fragility of the enterprise are of a quality you never see coming from Hollywood, let alone from the fortified walls of the Disney compound. Thankfully, like the creative culture that gave the studio its second golden era, the circumstances were just right for director Don Hahn and producer Peter Schneider to reconvene the insiders for the definitive tale.

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INTERVIEWS

AidenChase225.jpgHeidi Montag and Spencer Pratt are experts at the art of the publicity stunt. In the past year alone, the pair has finagled more tabloid covers than any of their Hills co-stars, quit I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here twice and survived a 24-hour plastic surgery decathlon that transformed Montag into an almost-unrecognizable tabloid star. So when Montag announced last week that she was dumping her manager husband in lieu of psychic Aiden Chase, Movieline, like the rest of the Hills-watching nation, was suspicious.

Movieline tracked down Montag’s new manager, Aiden Chase, a third-generation intuitive based in Beverly Hills, who explained his relationship with Montag, revealed which dead celebrities are rooting for the reality star and addressed the rumor that Spencer was banned from The Hills.

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The Movieline Interview

andy_garcia_tmi_top2.jpgThe comedy City Island was one of the most refreshing success stories to come out of last year’s Tribeca Film Festival, and Andy Garcia was one of the most refreshing success stories to come out of City Island. The 53-year-old actor delivers a revelatory performance as Vincent Rizzo, a corrections officer (and privately aspiring actor) who takes an interest in a soon-to-be-discharged prison inmate (Steven Strait) he’ll eventually set up at his house on the titular island just off the Bronx. Trouble arises as his high-strung wife (Julianna Margulies), college-age daughter (Dominik Garcia-Lorido) and smart-ass son (Ezra Miller) suspect something is up between the two — even as they scramble to hide secrets and desires of their own. Writer-director Raymond De Felitta steers the ensuing meltdown from farce to drama to dark comedy and back again, with Garcia’s conscience navigating closely alongside.

As even the actor alluded to Movieline earlier this week, it might seems odd City Island (which opens Friday) works at all. And that was just the start of our own winding chat from City Island to The Godfather to his upcoming directing effort with Anthony Hopkins, Hemingway and Fuentes.

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Interviews

mattwalsh225.jpgMatt Walsh was one-fourth of improv troupe Upright Citizens Brigade’s most famous lineup — the one with fellow comic totems Matt Besser, Ian Roberts, and Amy Poehler that fronted the ’90s Comedy Central series Upright Citizens Brigade. The 45-year-old’s cult hero status has led to a number of supporting roles as a correspondent on The Daily Show, bit player in The Hangover, Role Models, and I Love You Man, and star on Comedy Central’s recent Dog Bites Man. Now, as Walsh’s new Spike TV sports bar comedy Players takes off, he talks to Movieline about improvisation, the college experiences that led to Players, and the kind of “postmodern” comedy he finds annoying.

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Goodbye Kish

brettclaywell1.jpgIt’s entirely possible you missed a small revolution that played out on daytime TV this year, in a gay storyline on One Life to Live involving Officer Oliver Fish (Scott Evans, the younger, openly gay brother of Fantastic Four star Chris Evans) and Kyle Lewis (played by straight actor Brett Claywell), an old college friend whose sensitive hunkitude draws Fish out of the closet. Sure, gays on TV are nothing new, but Kish, as fans began to lovingly refer to them, shattered the age-old image of the gay eunuch, while demonstrating, in a New Year’s Eve consummation scene for the ages, that two masculine men in a committed relationship could make sensitive love without the use of a Lady Gaga backing track or cardboard box of sex toys. (Pottery Barn candles of varying heights, on the other hand, are another story.) It was transfixing, paradigm-busting stuff, heralded by media advocacy groups and perfectly timed to coincide with the gay marriage legislation fiascos of 2009.

Unfortunately, it didn’t add up to ratings, which were some of the lowest in One Life to Live history. Last week, both men were informed by producers that the storyline is being dropped and that the characters would be written out of the show by April. We approached Claywell, who was still a little stunned by the news but upbeat, for the real story. What we found was a brave, thoughtful and affable actor who seems to realize he was just a party to something big.

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The Movieline Interview

michaelshannon-main.jpgWhen we’re with the ladies of The Runaways there’s a lot of glum attitude and druggy malaise on display, so thank God for Michael Shannon as their Svengali producer Kim Fowley, who electrifies the movie like the lightning bolt that’s often painted on his face. It’s Shannon’s most high-profile part since snagging an Oscar nomination in Revolutionary Road, though since then he’s made Werner Herzog’s My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done and will soon be seen in Jonah Hex and the HBO series Boardwalk Empire.

In real life, Shannon couldn’t be more different from the wild lech he plays in The Runaways. Serious but also seriously funny, the actor sat down with Movieline last week to talk about working with all those young actresses, working in front of a camera in general, and working with the mysterious James Franco.

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INTERVIEWS

RyanMcPartlin225.jpgAs far as character names go, there is no cooler moniker on television than Captain Awesome. And Ryan McPartlin is still listing the credit on his IMDB page three seasons after winning the role on NBC’s cult-favorite Chuck, which fans have famously refused to let be canceled. Believe it or not, Captain Awesome started out as a peripheral character — the all-too-perfect boyfriend of Chuck’s sister — and now three years later, McPartlin’s character has become the first person in Chuck’s inner circle to infiltrate the spy world. To McPartlin, a modest former Abercrombie model from Chicago, the character’s growing arc was more a result of luck than talent — but there are a few Captain Awesome fans out there who might disagree.

Movieline caught up with the Chuck star recently to discuss a huge upcoming twist on the series, what it was like to pull down Betty Draper’s panties and the embarrassing role he passed up while nearly $20,000 in debt.

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Exclusives

Michel Gondry has made some of the most indelible music videos of all time for some of the biggest acts of the last two decades, including Radiohead, Björk, Foo Fighters, The White Stripes, Beck and even Paul McCartney and The Rolling Stones. So when Movieline caught up with him today to discuss his forthcoming documentary Thorn in the Heart, it seemed a great opportunity to feel him out on the new vanguard of the form: Lady Gaga, whose epic “Telephone” video has swept popular culture with a fury, frenzy and inspiration not seen since the glory days of which Gondry himself was a part. His response — which swept through genre monoliths from Michael Jackson to Madonna to Marilyn Manson — was unexpected to say the least.

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Miley Cyrus

mileytwitterlead.jpgIn a swank Santa Monica hotel overlooking the Pacific Ocean this weekend, Miley Cyrus spoke to reporters about her upcoming film, The Last Song — the latest romantic weepie from best-selling author Nicholas Sparks, and the first for which he also wrote the screenplay. Also a first for Sparks: Song was conceived and specifically written for Cyrus, who was looking for a project to help her break out of Hannah Montanadom and graduate to more mature roles.

“It’s interesting to leave my security blanket behind. It was such a huge deal in so many kids’ lives,” Cyrus said about the upcoming Hannah Montana finale. But as for revisiting the character in another film, she made it clear where she stands. “[Hannah’s] wig is,” she whistles, “out. One will be in a museum, and one will be… burned, or something.”

I admitted to having developed a guilty pleasure addiction to her Twitter feed, and went into Miley tweet withdrawal when she abruptly pulled the plug in October with a message reading, “FYI Liam doesn’t have a Twitter and he wants ME to delete mine with good reason.” (Liam, or course, refers to her Song co-star and now boyfriend, handsome Aussie discovery Liam Hemsworth.) So what, exactly, was that reason?

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The Verge

The Verge: Badge Dale

Written by Kyle Buchanan | 15 Mar 2010, 7:00 AM | 2 comments

badgedale-main.jpgAs the lead in HBO’s megabudget miniseries The Pacific, Badge Dale finally gets to rise to the front of an ensemble. The 31-year-old actor first appeared as the ill-fated Simon in the 1990 adaptation of Lord of the Flies, then resumed acting as an adult, landing a high-profile arc as Jack Bauer’s partner during the third season of 24. Since then, he’s been busy with a multitude of projects: In addition to his role as Robert Leckie in The Pacific, he’ll appear in Robert Redford’s The Conspirator and topline AMC’s next drama, Rubicon.

Dale called Movieline last week to chat about all three upcoming projects, but before we began our conversation, I had a little bit of bad news for him.

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