Filed under: Drama, Tribeca, Celebrities and Controversy, Politics, Interviews

After a Tribeca screening of The Killing of John Lennon at Pace University last week, director Andrew Piddington hung around to answer some questions from the crowd. The biggest question, which someone finally dared to ask, was how come when we see Mark David Chapman visiting New York City, it's unambiguously the New York City of 2007? We clearly see Chapman pass by Planet Hollywood, Toys R' Us and every other Times Square fixture you could possibly imagine. Piddington's answer? He needs more money to CGI that stuff away, and hasn't raised it yet. Other questions during the talk touched, of course, on Chapman's motivations, the whole conspiracy angle, the central performance of Jonas Ball, how Piddington went about casting Lennon and Ono, whether he actually met with Chapman and a number of other issues.


Crowd: Talk a little about the research and the casting process for the film.

AP: Considering research and casting, the gestation for this movie began four years ago -- it's taken four years to make. I first came across a book by Fenton Bresler called Who Killed John Lennon? This was a conspiracy book that set out to prove that Chapman was a Manchurian Candidate. There was a lot of evidence in it, but no proof. What it did have was a lot of depositions and transcripts, court information, all of which was public domain. And once I started to read the psychiatrist reports I became fascinated by the actual character. That was what drove me, and that's what started it. I then went onto the Internet and you can imagine the sort of stuff that's on the Internet. It's full of very difficult things to believe, and so therefore I then went to Ebay, and over the course of a year, I purchased nearly every single newspaper that was published during that four or five month period. That became my prime research material.

My instinct was always to cross-check three times and if the same information came through, then for me that was valid, and that's how I built up the screenplay. The screenplay took a while to write, and the film took four years to make. Jonas Ball, who I believe gives a magnificent performance in this film, the fascinating thing about Jonas Ball is that he is very young -- he hasn't done a great deal, but everything up there is very real and very solid and very mature. The great thing about any movie actor is the ability to hold the camera -- to have this relationship with the lens -- it's a cliche, but it's true -- and Jonas Ball has that. If an actor can carry a big close-up and give you the emotion that you require, that's a marvelous tool to have, and it's great for a director to use that tool. So I think he's gonna do really well. It's his first film, and he can't be here tonight because he's working, so that's good.

Continue reading Tribeca Q&A: 'The Killing of John Lennon' Director Andrew Piddington

Filed under: Celebrities and Controversy

It's a common complaint among the beautiful women of Hollywood -- they're not taken seriously and not given access to the meatiest parts (you don't even know the restraint it is taking not to make an "access to the meatiest parts" joke here). If I looked like Jessica Biel, I would be more than happy with that alone. I wouldn't need Academy Awards or critical adulation, I'd just need a mirror to gaze upon my incredible hotness. I'd probably never leave the house. Biel talks to Elle for their June issue (no, I wasn't reading Elle -- the article was quoted online), saying "Parts that I really want aren't going to me. Like The Other Boleyn Girl with Scarlett Johannson and Natalie Portman. I don't want to say there's nothing I love that I can't have. But there's still the occasional script that the director doesn't want to see you for. They want that top tier of girls."

I'll admit I've had a somewhat unseemly fixation on Biel since The Rules of Attraction, but when you get past the blinding attractiveness, she is a pretty decent actress. People don't put her with the Portmans and the Johannsons simply because she hasn't really had a chance to prove herself yet. I, like most of the world, didn't see her dramatic turn in Home of the Brave, but I thought she held her own quite nicely in The Illusionist. She's certainly as talented (and a lot less annoying) than a Kirsten Dunst. Biel is in theaters now with Nicolas Cage in Next, and she will be on the big screen again in this summer's I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. If she wants to take the focus off her looks, she probably shouldn't have done the underwear scene in that one. Clips of it in the trailer made me feel like a 13 year-old boy again.

Filed under: Action & Adventure, Romance, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Celebrities and Controversy, Comic/Superhero/Geek, Remakes and Sequels

Sorry to get all Us Weekly on you here, but I've always been fascinated by couples who act together, especially after the thrill is gone. How do they do it? In a recent interview, Sam Raimi discusses the real-life romance that blossomed between Spider-Man sweethearts Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst on the set of the first film. It seems Raimi was worried they might be lacking onscreen chemistry after their break-up. Having seen Spider-Man 3, I think he was right to be concerned, but Raimi disagrees, saying "I actually had some worries about that.. They apparently began dating with each other, I think, in the middle of the first movie ... although I didn't know it at the time ... but definitely they eventually broke up before the second movie. I was concerned they wouldn't get the same chemistry back, but it was just me worrying." Raimi was relieved there was no bad blood between the actors, and in fact thinks their affair might have strengthened their roles. "They really like each other, I think, very much. And that relationship probably just added to their ability to trust each other."

In the interview, Raimi also addresses the big emotions at play in the third Spidey adventure. "That's what I've always been attracted to [in Spider-Man], the contrast of the hero that is a human being ... he's filled with insecurities, constantly crying, constantly worrying. I feel the same way, you know...Just take away all the heroic parts of him. All the lame-whip parts of him -- that's me," says Raimi. "That's why I'm so interested in him as a role model." Oh, and if you saw Spider-Man 3 with a particularly harsh audience this weekend, you may have heard Raimi himself weeping in the back row. He says he is very insecure, and always goes to a local theater to see his movies in the company of a paying audience. "When they first open, I go out and I suffer through it, you know. It's a very educational experience."