Playwright, actor, director and screenwriter Tom Noonan is currently debuting his latest play, The Shape of Something Squashed, at New York’s Paradise Factory, but it might never have been written if it weren’t for an invitation to meet with Jennifer Lawrence one day. I’ll let Noonan tell the story below, but suffice to say that the bent emotions and darkly comic introspection that near-encounter produced are the stuff Noonan has memorably mined in his writing and directing work for years. Noonan’s film roles include singular turns in Heat, Mystery Train, Manhunter, Synecdoche, New York, and House of the Devil, to […]

“How elaborate is the camera?” The Foxy Merkins director Madeleine Olnek texted me as I was walking to photograph her with her female laden crew at Columbus Circle. “We would like to stage ourselves being hit by a cab,” she explained simply and obviously. As it happened, a few months prior to making The Foxy Merkins, a film about lesbian hookers, Olnek was in a taxi driven by a woman named Debbie. They got to talking and Debbie threw out the “If you ever need an [insert random gender, race, or career here]” phrase filmmakers always get. In Debbie’s case it […]

Gillian Robespierre, Elisabeth Holm and Jenny Slate are highly skilled comedians who are prone to self-deprecation and the bawdiest of humor that will make even the most sexually liberated feel prude. When I went to Robespierre’s apartment to take their photo, however, it was not a time for gag humor with kitschy props (condoms were, for example, off limits). Their film, Obvious Child, written and directed by Robespierre, produced by Holm and starring Slate, is both bold in its humor and also its intent: to make a comedy that talks about real issues that women face – something usually saved for […]

Once in a while, a film comes across your radar that plays so perfectly to your sensibilities, it seems someone handcrafted it with you in mind. These sorts of films are usually small, personal endeavors, that — preference-pending — are too niche for mass audiences, and struggle to find the complimentary festival or forum that will realize their loaded potential. Drew Tobia’s See You Next Tuesday is the lastest entry in this unjustly underground canon. A cult hit in the making if there ever was one, See You Next Tuesday concerns Mona, a pregnant, loudmouthed, lonesome and unhinged grocery store cashier, inhabited by the utterly uninhibited […]

Last weekend, John Malkovich came to Toronto to play Casanova onstage in The Giacomo Variations. The lanky 59-year-old made local headlines when he aided a fellow guest at his hotel who gashed his neck on some sharp scaffolding. Malkovich wondered if the next time the fellow saw him on screen, “He may think, ‘This guy had his hands around my neck.’” Malkovich was speaking to a capacity audience at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. He appeared between performances to kick off TIFF’s summer program that was sharing space with the Century of Chinese Cinema program featuring the likes of Chris Doyle and […]

Brit Marling recently gave the convocation speech for the 2013 graduating class of Georgetown University, the alma mater of the writer/producer/actress and her friends and collaborators Mike Cahill and Zal Batmanglij. Cahill directed Marling in Another Earth, a film she co-wrote, and Batmanglij has stood at the helm of Sound of My Voice and the new eco-thriller The East, both of which also credit Marling as co-writer and star. In her speech, a riveting address that was wonderfully articulate and rang deeply true, Marling offered fun anecdotes about her misadventures with Cahill and Batmanglij (Cahill, for example, once served as […]

Few movies were so widely talked about at Cannes as Ari Folman’s The Congress, a part live-action, part-animated adaption of Stanislaw Lem’s sprawling sci-fi novel. It’s a film that explores society’s obsession with celebrity culture, its constant need for escapism, and what effects technology may have on the future of storytelling. In addition to the gorgeous, other-worldly animation, the acting is stunning, with unforgettable performances by Robin Wright as the aging actress, Harvey Keitel as the hustling agent, and Danny Huston as the scary studio executive, Jeff. Huston nails the character of Jeff, creating both a serpentine man who’s all […]

This interview with Bruce Dern was originally published following the Cannes Film Festival, where Nebraska premiered. If you ever have the good fortune of getting a press pass that grants you access to a roundtable with a Hollywood star, there are few actors out there who could provide a better interview than Bruce Dern, who recently won a Best Actor award at Cannes for his performance in Alexander Payne’s comedic drama, Nebraska. A planned 20-minute roundtable with a few grizzled journalists turned into a half-hour sprawling monologue of memories and observations on movie production, gently flavored with imitations of Hollywood […]

There’s a trend in actor-turned-director helmed films at Cannes this year, an impeccable direction of the people on screen. You can tell there’s a sense of trust and cohesive goal to create something great. One of the clearest examples of this is James Franco’s new feature film, As I Lay Dying, based on the great American classic by William Faulkner, the story of the death of Addie Bundren and her family’s quest to honor her wish to be buried in the town of Jefferson. The vivid characters have come to life on the big screen through Franco’s split-screen filmmaking, led by […]

Julianne Moore makes it terribly easy to like her. Her remarkable consistency has helped her remain a stellar screen presence for more than two decades. Her transformative abilities have morphed her into everything from a troubled hypochondriac (Safe) and a maternal porn star (Boogie Nights) to a 1950s housewife (Far From Heaven) and one half of a loving lesbian couple (The Kids Are All Right). And her singular, nature-defying beauty has continued to land her fashion cover shoots at the age of 52. All of this springs to mind when Moore greets an eager parade of press while promoting her new […]