Kevin Kline has established himself as one of the finest actors of his generation, with a much-respected career in both theater and film. He has won two Tony awards, for On the Twentieth Century and The Pirates of Penzance, as well as an Oscar, for A Fish Called Wanda. The latter role illustrates his ability to move between comedy and drama with ease, and, indeed, his performance remains one of the few comedic turns ever to win an Academy Award. In his latest film, The Extra Man, he plays a fallen New York aristocrat who scrapes by providing "companionship" to wealthy older women. He spoke at length about the film during a recent interview with the press.
Q: Would this film be any different if it weren't set in New York?
A: It's very New York, with all it has to offer culturally. My character is literally
feeding on that, on art openings and galleries and museums. All these
social events that are very specific to New York. I don't know if he
cold exist in L.A., for example, though there are extra men in L.A. and
Florida. When we played the Sarasota Film Festival, so many people came
up and said, "You're in an extra-man city!" There are so many wealthy
widows and retirees in Florida, and they all need a male friend.
Q: So what was the attraction of the role for you?
A: I knew on page two that I wanted to play this character. The word
"delight" kept coming up. It just delighted me, and tickled me, and made
me laugh out loud. I found his voice so original, even though you can
compare him to other eccentric characters in literature and film. He was
just so outrageous, and flamboyant, and extravagant, and
contradictory, and complicated, and funny.
Q: Do you know
anyone like him?
A: I'm sure I've met them, but didn't
necessarily know what they did. Working in the theater in New York, one
can meet flamboyant men-about-town. Bons vivants. But I didn't base him
on anyone in particular. I just took him from the novel and from the
screenplay.
Q: Do you miss the camaraderie of the theater when
you do a film? That familial bond of a small group of performers trying
to make it work?
A: Actually, there can be familial
bonding on a film as well, and that phenomenon can get trying in the
long run in theater, especially if you're in a theater company, which I
was, for four years. The family can get dysfunctional as time goes on.
People say that an ensemble takes years to develop, but you
can have an instant ensemble if everyone is -- and I hate the expression --
on the same page, in terms of the project you're working on. You're all
in the trenches together, and it can be very intimate.
Q: How
about the dancing you did in the film? How did you develop that?
A:
In the book, he dances in a much more -- sort of a fox-trot movement. He
says, "I try to move whatever I think is rotting." We kind of took that
to the next step, where everything is rotting. I'm moving pretty much
everything. A brilliant choreographer and an old friend named Patricia
Birch was brought in, and we tried different things with her. Finally
she said, "Why don't you try that goofy modern dance, that Martha Graham-meets-Frankenstein dance, and just do your own thing?" It was pretty
free-form and much longer. It was about a five-minute dance, and they
just took a little piece of it.
Q: Even at the end, we don't
fully understand this character. Do you have to understand him in order
to play him?
A: That's a very good question, and the answer
is no. He is a mysterious character; he's full of contradictions.
There's a side of him that's very theatrical, as if he's playing a role.
Part of that is wanting a mystique and being mysterious, and part of it
is that there's things he doesn't want to talk about. That's part of
his charm. If you understand the pathology of a character, it's not
necessarily dramatic or funny or interesting. Also, you've explained it
all away.
Q: How do you create that feeling of an age gone by --
this notion of living in an older time, while the rest of the world has
moved on?
A: With the character. I think the character is
quite aware that it's moved on and finds it vulgar. Shameful and common
and without style. His response to that is to live in the past, to
create his own past. He's a guy who lives in his own world. He's Don
Quixote, in a way. They're just windmills, but, to him, they're giants who
need to be conquered. That ability to delude yourself into making the
world a more beautiful place than it is -- and to scorn those parts which
aren't up to your standards -- is very critical.
Q: Are
there any unique challenges to approaching comedy that you wouldn't find
in a more serious role?
A: I remember Richard Attenborough
said something once. I did a film with him and I went off afterward to
do A Fish Called Wanda. He said, "Comedy is so difficult because
it's so binary." It's either funny or it isn't. With comedy, sort of
funny doesn't work. You've got to thread the needle and get it right.
Archive for July, 2010
Q&A – The Extra Man’s Kevin Kline on Florida, Frankenstein Dancing, and the Importance of Being Funny
Sunday, July 11th, 2010What, Exactly, Does Bruce Willis Smell Like?
Sunday, July 11th, 2010Filed under: Celebrities and Controversy, Newsstand
Does Bruce Willis smell like gunpowder, sweat, and dried blood? In my mind he always did, but my world was crushed today with the discovery of his new cologne, titled simply "Bruce Willis."Sparing no hyperbole, LR Health and Beauty CEO Tilo Ploger had this to say, "I personally feel that the new Bruce Willis fragrance is the manliest scent in the world." So, the cologne smells like pine trees, bourbon, and exhaust fumes? I wish! Instead, the new fragrance, also available as a body wash and deodorant, smells of pepper, grapefruit, and something called "vetiver", which I can only assume is the bottled smell of his sheets after a night with Alisha Klass (note: I have come to find out that vetiver is a type of grass grown in India).
Racked reports that the marketing slogan for the fragrance is "Smart Guys Live Forever." If Bruce Willis dies, we can all sue for false advertising! Unless, of course, Bruce Willis isn't a smart guy. However, if he is indeed an immortal, you can follow us right here on Cinematical for all the latest news on Die Hard CLXII (that's 162 -- I'm a smart guy).
I posted the question on Twitter and Facebook -- What does Bruce Willis smell like? You can read people's responses after the jump (and make sure to chime in with your own).
Continue reading What, Exactly, Does Bruce Willis Smell Like?
Top Ten “Just One Last Job!” Flicks
Saturday, July 10th, 2010When criminals retire, no one gives them a farewell luncheon and a gold watch, let alone a pension. Hence, they need the Über-clichéd One! Last! Big! Job! to provide comfort and serenity in their twilight years. Occasionally, it's redemption they're after and a return to the right side of the law, as in Leonardo DiCaprio's soon-to-be-released Inception. But, usually, it's all about the Benjamins. Below, our ten favorite films about that fateful final heist.
Thief
Smarter and more involving than your average thriller, Michael Mann's first feature stars James Caan as a talented and successful criminal who decides that what he really wants is a quiet life with Tuesday Weld -- and who can blame him? But for that, he needs a nest egg, so he signs on for one big final caper. And, from there, it's vice, vice, baby.
Heist
David Mamet, master of intricate plotting and testoster-rific dialogue, has ping-ponged from stage to screen and back again. Heist was his first film for a major studio, and it brought together an unlikely cast of performers: Delroy Lindo, Sam Rockwell, Danny DeVito, and Gene Hackman, as the aging criminal strong-armed into executing that one last job: here, the liberation of a shipment of Swiss gold.
The Getaway
In a shady little example of quid pro quo, the wife of a prisoner arranges his release by offering his services (as a former bank robber) and hers (as a sexy lady) to a corrupt politician. Critics griped about the nonsensical plot, but the movie did at least two people some good: as the loving couple, Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw delved so deeply into their roles that MacGraw left her husband for McQueen. McDangerous liaison.
Sexy Beast
Sexy Beast features Ben Kingsley at his snarly-est, though he's not the fellow pulled back in just when he thought he was out. That would be Ray Winstone, as unwillingly un-retired safecracker Gal Dove. British director Jonathan Glazer stirs things up by adding elements of horror and surrealism to what would otherwise be a fairly clichéd tale -- but, needless to say, it doesn't go well.
Unforgiven
Clint Eastwood snagged two Oscars for this almost embarrassingly acclaimed revisionist Western, making his mantelpiece a possible candidate for its own heist. As former hell-raiser William Munny, Eastwood would really rather hang out on the farm raising his kids than seek out a bunch of cowboys with a price on their heads, but his pigs are sick. And those vet bills don't pay themselves, so he straps one on, and, well, you know what happens from there.
The Killer
John Woo paid homage to two of his idols, Martin Scorsese and Sam Peckinpah, in this action drama. The great Chow Yun Fat plays a Triad assassin who agrees to pull off one last hit in order to finance a nightclub singer's eye operation: it's the least he can do, since he's the one who blinded her, in the first place. And, as the director explains, "once you pick up a gun, it's hard to put it down."
Rififi
None other than François Truffaut called this noir-y French flick the "best crime film I have ever seen," and many others have praised its
second act, which contains the heist itself and is devoid of dialogue
and music. The grizzled con at the heart of the tale -- Tony le Stéphanois (Jean Servais) -- opts out of the first job he's offered, only to reconsider shortly thereafter. The reason? A girl. Naturally.
The Killing
A collaboration between Stanley Kubrick -- it was his first major motion picture -- and pulp author Jim Thompson, The Killing follows Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden) as he plans and executes the big racetrack heist that will net him enough scratch to finally quit the game and settle down with his sweetie. The plot entranced critics, who praised the film's suspense and fine performances.
HeatMichael Mann cast wisely for his second appearance on our list: Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, playing (respectively) the career criminal craving a comfy retirement and the cop determined to take him down. The two stars appear onscreen together only twice, but the gripping plot -- in which Pacino and his gang successfully pull of a never-need-to-work-again armored-car heist -- was more than enough to give this one instant-classic status.
The Wild Bunch
Sam Peckinpah's then-revolutionary mix of slow and standard motion makes this film's final shoot-out scene one of the genre's best. Here revenge is but one catalyst for the eponymous gang's ultimate score. They'd also like to retire peacefully and prosperously. Alas, things go terribly awry, as (note to career criminals) they so often do.
Mel Gibson Fallout: Audio Released, Agents Gone, Career … Over?
Saturday, July 10th, 2010Filed under: Celebrities and Controversy, Newsstand
As we continue to sift through the wreckage left in the aftermath of Mel Gibson's latest offensively racist tirade, one thing seems clear: Gibson's career in mainstream Hollywood is deader than William Wallace at the end of Braveheart. The emergence of the recording of Gibson telling Oksana Grigorieva that she's to blame if she gets "raped by a pack of n*****s" would seem to make that obvious.However, as the 24 Frames blog over at the L.A. Times points out, this was a certainty even before the tape appeared. William Morris Endeavor -- the agency repping Gibson -- dumped the actor last week. The news didn't surface until yesterday, but clearly someone at the firm has had enough of Gibson's antics. The speculation is that his latest tirade, coupled with last week's passing of agent Ed Limato, finally cleared the way for the WME to part ways with the beleaguered performer.
Continue reading Mel Gibson Fallout: Audio Released, Agents Gone, Career ... Over?
The most interesting ads in the world?
Saturday, July 10th, 2010
No, that gentleman on the left isn't auditioning for the Taye Diggs part in a remake of "How Stella Got Her Groove Back." It's Isaiah Mustafa as the impossibly confident beefcake guy in the Old Spice ads. You probably recognize him (even if you didn't know his name), just as you also probably recognize Jonathan Goldsmith, below, as the Porfirio
Rubirosa-like playboy in those Dos Equis ads where he's billed as "the most interesting man in
the world." He could give Tony Stark lessons.
Both these campaigns are a lot more entertaining than almost any of this year's movies. They're so smart and funny you'd think a live-action, PG-13 Pixar had made them. So the arrival of two new Old Spice ads a week ago is cause for minor rejoicing (that power-saw bit!). It also raises an inevitable, if vexing, question, one on the order of magnitude of Beatles vs. Stones? Butch vs. Sundance? Death vs. dishonor? That question is: Who'd win a duel between these these two guys? It's a tough one, all right. In "Twilight" terms, would Old Spice be a vampire and Dos Equis a werewolf?
As you ponder your choice, stay watching, my friends.
Edward Norton Won’t Play Hulk In ‘The Avengers’
Friday, July 9th, 2010Filed under: Action, Casting, Paramount, RumorMonger, Celebrities and Controversy, DIY/Filmmaking, Newsstand, Comic/Superhero/Geek, Remakes and Sequels
For two years, Edward Norton and Marvel have been dancing around whether or not he'll reprise his role as the Hulk in The Avengers. Norton has insisted he's simply waiting by the phone for Marvel to call him up, and that he was eager to return to the character, but nothing has ever happened.Now, Drew McWeeny of HitFix is reporting that Marvel plans to hire an unknown to play the Hulk in The Avengers. Reportedly, Norton even met with Joss Whedon (who, it must be said, is still unconfirmed but is actively working on the film) and the two hit it off very well. Norton supposedly even cleared his schedule with goodwill. But no offer has been extended to him. In fact, Marvel has made it clear that they're moving on and giving the role to someone else -- someone cheaper. McWeeny writes, "In early conversations, it sounds like a deal could be made here, and simply wasn't. Norton's desire to return to the role was so palpable at SXSW, and that was before he met with Whedon, that I can't imagine he would refuse to negotiate or find some way to satisfy Marvel. So the question is really why won't Marvel try to make Norton happy at all when he obviously brings so much weight to the team?"
It's whispered that Marvel plans to introduce the Avengers in Hall H at SDCC this year in person. One of these will apparently be the new Hulk. While that's an exciting picture, knowing that Norton wants to be on that stage but won't be takes the shine off it a little bit. The Hulk doesn't need an actor's actor like Norton, but it's awfully cool that one wants to play him. Why not fatten that lineup out just a little more, bring on Norton, and make The Avengers truly epic?
Does Norton's non-involvement in The Avengers hurt the film, or is it a non issue in your opinion?
Lights, camera, Dartmouth!
Friday, July 9th, 2010
Although no one would ever confuse Hanover for Hollywood, at least seven Dartmouth movie connections come to mind. One of F. Scott Fitzgerald's two most famous film credits, "Winter
Carnival," is set there; its producer, Walter Wanger, was an alum. David Thomson taught there, as did Maury Rapf, who founded the school's film studies program. Two eminent screenwriters are graduates, Budd Schulberg and Buck Henry. Also, a certain pillar of Movie Nation did a bit of Big Green matriculating himself -- studying with Thomson, in fact.
Okay, eight: There's Dartmouth being the model for Faber College, in "Animal House."
Now there's another connection, albeit short-lived. "Made in Hollywood: Photographs from the John Kobal Foundation" is at Dartmouth's Hood Museum of Art through Sept. 12. Kobal was the preeminent collector of Hollywood studio portraits. His collection is to the Studio Era what the Michael Ochs Archives is to rock 'n' roll. Here we see the Golden Age at its most gleaming and glamorous. The idea was to make these phenomenally attractive men and women -- Gable, Bergman, Taylor, Hayworth, Welles, to name a few -- look their very best, and they sure did. The exhibition includes 93 photographs in all, the work of 50 photographers, among them Clarence Sinclair Bull, MGM's chief studio photographer for 40 years, and George Hurrell, the Apollo of studio portraitists. Beauty has rarely looked so beautiful.
Ty’s movie picks for Friday, July 9
Friday, July 9th, 2010
Pick hit: "Bigger Than Life" at the Harvard Film Archive, tonight (Friday) at 7 p.m., introduced by Susan Ray, daughter of director Nicholas Ray. The film kicks off the Archive's Ray series -- a tribute to a filmmaker of unparalleled visual and textual emotion -- and is a rarely seen blat of brilliant 50s neurosis in which James Mason (in photo above) plays a stressed-out small town schoolteacher who veers into mania as a result of cortisone treatments. If you've seen "Rebel Without a Cause" in a movie theater, you know that Ray used color and widescreen cinematography with more agonized flair than almost any other director (except maybe his devoted acolyte Jean-Luc Godard). Another of his odes to outsiders, "Bigger Than Life" is an almost hallucinatory dismantling of the certainties of Eisenhower America. Highly recommended, as is Saturday's screening of 1949's "They Live By Night," a primal influence on Penn's "Bonnie and Clyde" and remade by Altman as 1974's "Thieves Like Us." The unheralded Cathy O'Donnell gives one of the most touching performances in all of American cinema as a backwoods nobody made incandescent by her love for a naive young criminal (Farley Granger). (Here's the scene where the two meet.)
As far as multiplex fare goes, I've been predicting for years now that director Nimrod Antal might turn out to be the great genre-movie hope of his generation, much as John Carpenter was in the 1970s and James Cameron was in the 1980s. Films like "Kontroll, " "Vacancy," and "Armored" may be cheap but they're lean, smart, and effective -- unapologetic B-movies turned out with skillful panache. I'm such a fan, in fact, that an acquaintance just sent me an e-mail asking how the heck I let Wesley review "Predators," the movie that in theory may finally vault Antal into the A-list. Luck of the draw, I guess, but Wes has seen the light and so should you. Yes, it's a sequel. So was "Aliens."
From the expertly ridiculous to the Gallic sublime: The annual Boston French Film Festival hits the Museum of Fine Arts for a two-week trawl through the country's latest cinematic highlights (it's to be hoped). Here's an idea: Go catch the restored print of "Breathless" at the Coolidge or Kendall this weekend, then touch down at the MFA next Friday for "Two in the Wave," a documentary about the friendship of Nouvelle Vague titans Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut.
What? You've never seen "Breathless"?! Here's your chance, then. Just understand that if much about the film seems familiar, it's because movies (and TV and commercials) have been absorbing its lessons for 50 years. The original still captures that beautiful mayfly moment when the cinema seemed new again.
"Despicable Me" is fine for the kiddies and just sly enough to keep mom and dad from nodding into their popcorn. At heart it's as mediocre as the Times' A.O. Scott says, but the details fizz nicely. A good start for newcomer Illumination Entertainment. Meanwhile, the local arthouses are abuzz with the arrival of "The Girl Who Played with Fire," the second installment in the Swedish film adaptations of Stieg Larsson's best-selling crime series. The movie boils water but it's not all that special; of course, I haven't read the books, so I can't port my literary memories over to the screen. Noomi Rapace is terrific as the title heroine -- man, I'd like to see her take on Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt; he'd be a smudge on the pavement -- but the filmmaking is essentially a stodgy, made-for-TV item with spurts of gore and ooh-la-la lesbianism. I don't normally say this, but the upcoming Hollywood version of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," directed by David Fincher and starring Daniel Craig (no takers for the role of Lisbeth yet) is likely to be an improvement.
Want further guidance? Check out Metacritic, Rotten Tomatoes, and David Gross's Movie Review Intelligence.
8. Predators – $7.0M
Thursday, July 8th, 2010
A group of elite warriors are hunted by members of a merciless alien race known as Predators.
2. Despicable Me – $32.8M
Thursday, July 8th, 2010
The world's second-greatest villain (Steve Carell) meets his match in three little orphans.
