SXSW Audience Award Winner, “Brotherhood”: Exclusive Interview With the Star And Director

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The audience award at this years SXSW was the film, Brotherhood. It’s about a college student on his last night as a pledge for a fraternity. He finds himself blindfolded in the back of a van and made to rob a convenience store for his final initiation. Then, things go horribly wrong. (Of course, right?)

It’s a really good film and I was happy to interview the star, Jon Foster, and co-writer/director, Will Canon.

Jon plays Frank, the senior frat brother. He’s currently starring opposite Jenna Elfman in the CBS show Accidentally On Purpose but this role is 1,000 miles away from that character.

And for Will Canon, this is his first feature film. He’s had several award-winning short films that have been seen on Showtime and shown at Sundance.

You cast the film, did you have people in mind already?

Will: When we first started, I didn’t know a lot of the age group.  And so, once we started to see the work that these guys had done, it was pretty much like these are the guys we have to have.

Did you see it in person or see it on tape?

Will: We kind of did a little bit of everything.  I tried to meet with the guys whenever I could.  Then like Jon, for instance, we were in different states.  When we were going through the process of to lock everything in, so we just did a lot over the phone.  The first time I met him was when he flew in to do the movie.

As soon as you saw the actor, were you like, ‘this is the guy I want?’

Will: For the most part, yes.  For me, for a lot of these guys, it was very instinctual.  It wasn’t something I could necessarily articulate, but I saw him and I was like he’s got the thing that is Frank and he’s got the thing that is Adam, you know?  And I couldn’t tell you what it was necessarily.

Jon: Also what helped was, too, was the three of us have been friends for a really long time.  But he wasn’t quite aware of that until, I guess Trevor [Morgan] was the first one cast, and then he was like what about Lou Pucci for this part because they’re best friends.  And that’s how that started.  And then Pucci and I are roommates.  It’s all very incestuous.

Will: And it helps.

John: Yeah it helps being able to do the film with friends.

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Quote: Greta Gerwig

In last week’s Entertainment Weekly, Greta Gerwig had some great advice:

“I remember sitting at my kitchen table and my mom saying, ‘Do you really think you’re as good as Meryl Streep?” she laughs. “I said, ‘Mom, I just have to be as good as me.”

Greta is currently starring in the new film, Greenberg (with Ben Stiller)

(This was the 3.26.10 issue with Tina Fey & Steve Carell. Page 54)

Screenplay: “Hot Tub Time Machine”

Want the screenplay to Hot Tub Time Machine?

Sure you do!

Click here for the script

Director: Steve Pink
Cast: John Cusack, Lizzy Caplan, Chevy Chase, Rob Corddry, Clark Duke, Craig Robinson, Crispin Glover

 

 

Thanks to Script Collector

Screenplay: “Greenberg”

Want the screenplay to Greenberg?

Sure you do!

Click here for the script

Director: Noah Baumbach
Starring: Ben Stiller, Greta Gerwig, Rhys Ifans, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Chris Messina, Brie Larson, Juno Temple

Thanks to Script Collector

Hot Tub Time Machine: Soundbites and Clips

Here’s some soundbites with the stars of Hot Tub Time Machine – Rob Corddry, Clark Duke and Craig Robinson (no John Cusack).

And here are some clips:

In The Mirror

Is Michael Jackson Black?

The Duplass Brothers: “Honest and real and really unpredictable is what we’re really looking for”

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Jay and Mark Duplass (The Duplass Brothers) are hot right now. They have Cyrus (starring John C. Reilly, Jonah Hill & Marisa Tomei) and are currently in pre-production on Jeff Who Lives At Home (with Ed Helms and Jason Segel).

To be honest, I’d never seen one of their films till Cyrus. I’d heard about them, especially once I got to Austin for SXSW, and was excited to see the film. The film is both hilarious and touching and you will love seeing John C. Reilly and Jonah Hill in different roles than you’re familiar seeing them in.

I got a chance to talk with them in a roundtable interview so most of the questions aren’t mine. I did ask some casting questions regarding John and Jonah. And check out the audio (above or on iTunes) portion for the whole discussion.

(For more on Cyrus, click here for my interview with the stars John C. Reilly and Jonah Hill)

How long have you guys been working on this script?

Jay: Good question. You know, we normally write our scripts pretty quickly when we it’s just us producing them because we know we’re gonna improvise the dialogue a bit so once the structure is rock solid we know we’re production-ready. But you know, this was a script where you have to write it well and make it attractive to actors and to the studios so that they want to greenlight it. So we just spent a little time making it look pretty, you know? The bells and whistles. We were, I think we worked on it for like a year or so on and off. We were doing other things at the time. But on and off before we actually got the greenlight.

Do you have any experience as children as of single parents dating again or knowing people in those situations?

Mark: No, none really. We are good little Catholic boys and our Catholic parents have been married for 42 years and are still together.

Jay: What we do have a lot of experience with is desperation (laughter). We have that in spades.

Mark: Inter-personal dysfunction.

Along those lines, when you guys have the photograph of breastfeeding (laughter), it was terribly icky, I was dying laughing. Were there other things like that that you took out because you were like, you know what, that’s just too icky? Or was that about it?

Mark: The level of ickiness was about what we had hoped it would be. There’s an ick-ometer that we have on set.

Jay: We were riding high at about a 3.8 the whole time. If you stay right there, if you go over, people start crying and it gets weird.

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SAG Liferaft: The Real Deal On Actor Reels

SAG Liferaft has been putting out some great stuff recently.  I haven’t been able to watch the newer ones but I’m in the midst of catching up on them.

This one is all about demo reels. Its got some great info so you should check it out!

And for more info on reels, take a look at my interview with Joe Gressis of Secret Hansdhake. He does incredible work.

John C. Reilly and Jonah Hill on ‘Cyrus’, Improvising and more!

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John C. Reilly and Jonah Hill, two of the best comedic actors around right now, are currently starring in the new film, Cyrus.

Cyrus is a bit of a departure for both actors (although you can’t tell from the trailer). Reilly plays more of a grown up then he has recently and Hill plays it serious but it’s still an incredibly funny movie. The film, one of the highlights from SXSW, was mostly improvised and solidifies just how talented these two guys really are.

So do you think the era of the John C. Riley, leading man romantic comedy is finally here?

John:  Yes (laughter).  I don’t know.  Is there an era right now?  I hope so.  I’m a very romantic person.  I like doing parts like this.  And I think there’s lots of people out there that are not represented in movies that have romantic feelings whose stories don’t get told.

Exactly.

John:  You know what I’m talking about (laughter).  Neither of us look like Brad Pitt.  Let’s not fool ourselves.  I’m with you brother.

Yeah, I’m happy to see you do this genre and bring a reality to it that’s missing, an emotional reality.

John:  Yeah we try to be truthful in our emotions in this movie.

Did you think of yourself kind of as the straight man in this, if you’re gonna call it a romantic comedy?

John:  No, you know, the “straight man” is Marisa’s [Tomei] character because she doesn’t know what’s going on.  We’ve got this whole secret battle happening standing in front of her like it’s not going on. Because I’m a very foolish character in this movie, too, I make a lot of mistakes and bad choices and yeah.

But with a little more maturity though I think.  I like the maturity of your character.

John:  Yeah, that’s one thing I really did enjoy playing in this movie, you know I’m not a kid anymore.  I often play or have played man-child kind of characters before.  It was really great to be able to just sit in a scene and be as mature as I am in life.  And I think that’s some of the best moments of awkwardness between Jonah and I when he’s like, ‘Seriously dude don’t fuck my mom’ (laughter), and my comeback, you improvised that line, and my comeback was, ‘Well, I’m not going to lie to you.  Your mom and I did have sex.’  It’s just one of those moments where you’re being truthful.  Alright, if this is the situation, regardless of what the script says, this is how I would deal with it, if I was sitting across from a 21-year-old like, Mommy and I are –

Jonah:  Special friends (laughter).

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MacGruber Interview At the SXSW IFC House

Here is the MacGruber interview I sat in on at the IFC House at SXSW.

14 Acting Tips From Jeffrey Tambor’s SXSW Workshop

Jeffrey Tambor gave his annual Acting Workshop at SXSW this year and no matter what, I was not going to miss it.

I arrived an hour early and was the 5th person in line. When Tambor got on stage, he brought out  the stars of Bryan Poyser’s Lovers of Hate – Chris Doubek and Heather Kafka. The idea was to have them do a scene from the film and he would direct it.

Over the next 90 minutes, he would have them act the scene in different accents, make Doubek act like a child, sing their lines and finally do the scene as an opera.

And it made the scene better once was all said and done. His idea is to destroy the scene before you can build it.

Tambor has acting classes in Santa Monica and from what I saw, his style totally inspired me. Watching him is one of my SXSW highlights. I highly recommend taking his class. Click here for the website.

I took a massive amount of notes and below are the best of the best.

1. “In Meet Joe Black, they gave me size 13 shoes. I’m a size 12. I was on my way to do a scene with Anthony Hopkins and I was walking to the set from my trailer. Walking and I just started to sway a little bit. I had been working on the role for a couple of months. On that, maybe, 1 minute walk, he became a lush. And by the time I hit the set, I said to Marty [Brest - the director], “Lets make him about 5 drinks into this, shall we? [Pretending to be the Director, he puts his thumb and gives the 'OK'] That came, literally, from some kinetic thing that I learned to listen to.”

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