Walking a Tightrope: John Hamburg on Why Him?
John Hamburg discusses character motivation and infusing back story into the comedy, and reveals a serendipitous behind-the-scenes anecdote.
John Hamburg discusses character motivation and infusing back story into the comedy, and reveals a serendipitous behind-the-scenes anecdote.
Bridge of Spies: Spielberg, the Coens and Tom Hanks
Matt Charman on "the most incredible film school you could ever have."
When Rudolf Abel was arrested for sending coded messages to back Mother Russia, the U.S. government asked Brooklyn insurance lawyer James Donovan to represent the alleged spy—a task Donovan begrudgingly accepted. After all, defending a Soviet agent during the Cold War 1950s is bad for business. In any case, Donovan (Tom Hanks) failed to win […]
Making “Room”
Emma Donoghue on adapting her best-selling novel, the locked room as metaphor and the universal experiences of parenthood.
Confined to a windowless, 10-by-10-foot shed, a young woman lovingly raises the child she conceived with her rapist captor, in Room, a psychological thriller written by Irish novelist Emma Donoghue, who adapted the script from her same-named best-selling book. This simply-described premise turns out to be a boundless mystical journey, as Ma (Brie Larson) does […]
Seduced by Steve Barancik: The Last Seduction
Why Steve Barancik's award-winning film makes him cringe, how to sneak a good movie past the executives, the risks of getting impersonated and a trick to shorten any script.
Every once in a great while, a film comes along that changes everything. Not a juggernaut event movie that stirs the masses, but a small film you watch with a quiet exhilaration that reminds you why you fell in love with cinema in the first place. The 1994 neo-noir thriller The Last Seduction, directed by […]
Gerwig and Baumbach: The Masters of Indie on Mistress America
Verbal hegemony, impenetrable façades, cadenced dialogue, screwball comedies and poetic psychics all feature in this essential interview with Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig.
For college lit student Tracy (Lola Kirke), freshman year isn’t going quite as well as she had hoped. Her classes are a snore, her roommate is rude, and she was rejected by the literary society she was heart-set on joining. But things look brighter when she meets her decade older stepsister-to-be Brooke (Greta Gerwig), a […]
