From the Archives: Kirsten Dunst Interviewed

I've been racing around this week from interview to interview. You'll start seeing them as soon as I can catch my breath. For numerous reasons my mind kept leaping back to last year's precursor season when I met with Kirsten Dunst while she was on the promotional circuit for the true crime romantic drama All Good Things. Her name popped up Wednesday while I was talking with Ben Foster (Rampart) -- he's a past co-star and endearingly describes himself as "a silly fan of Kirsten" -- and Melancholia is never far from my mind as one of the most provocative and essential films of 2011. Her mysterious bewitching lead role as a severely depressed bride has, at this point, not garnered as much Best Actress traction as the performance merits, but there's little doubt that her career is most decidedly back on track. I read yesterday that she'd just joined the cast of Red Light Winter which will reunite her with Mark Ruffalo. This interview was already on my mind, and that sealed it since she had such happy memories of working with him.

So let's travel back in time a year to a pivotal re-energizing moment in her career when neither we nor Kirsten knew what to expect from Melancholia and the rollercoaster of the film's Cannes debut, controversial press conference, and Best Actress win was still future tense.

The Return of Kirsten Dunst (A Very Good Thing)
***Originally Published in December 2010***

It might sound silly to say, but seeing her in the flesh is something of a shock. Kirsten Dunst has been in the movies for many years, and she's made an indelible mark in them, whether as a child vampire, an unknowable teen dream, a disciplined cheerleader, a superhero's better half and so on; one half expects her to flicker when one meets her, as if she's being projected still. But there she was earlier this month at a New York City luncheon honoring her heartbreaking work in All Good Things. Her image did not fade or dissolve but remained steady in medium shot. She ate, she sipped, she walked around the room talking with reporters, friends and peers.

There was, however, a close-up. We shook hands and exchanged a few pleasantries. Then she was whisked off, not by a sharp edit, jump cut or a quick pan, but by her people taking her to the next reporter. Imagine it!

I reminded her of the busy luncheon a few days later over the phone. She's already thousands of miles away.  This time, she's a disembodied voice which is surprisingly more familiar, like a movie image. "You were so in demand," I say, reminding her of the crowd and well-wishers.

"You know...," she says, and I do having been there, "A lot of babies to kiss. A lot of hands to shake."

It's good to hear the smile in her voice and remember her amiable presence in the room that day. Especially considering the sadness that lingers from her fine work in All Good Things. People have won Oscar nominations for giving much less to their films than she does here, in one of her finest performances. She starts out sunny and delightful, the girlish woman we sort of recognize from numerous other films but she's soon torn apart by her husband's (Ryan Gosling) dark almost alien soul.  The film is based on a true story, the unsolved mystery of the disappearance of Katie Marks (Kirsten), the bride of the heir to a wealthy New York family.  I've followed her career enthusiastically for many years, once even referring to her as "the future of the movies" but naturally we start with the present and the subject at hand.

It's not the first time she's played a real life character but how did she tackle someone who isn't easy to research, someone who went missing? Here Kirsten cedes most of the credit to her director, who knew the case inside and out.

KIRSTEN: Everything that we knew about [Katie] is in the script. She's not a public figure. Yes, she's a real person but not someone that we know her mannerisms. It was really about making her feel like a whole person that was unravelling, as he was in a way, someone with her own strong motives so it wouldn't just be The Victim of this crime.

Nathaniel: You have to have the full range of their romance.

KIRSTEN: That was so important. You have to believe these people were completely in love with each other in order for her to stay and to excuse the behavior

Did anything change a lot from filming to the finished movie?  You're acting piecemeal and the movie takes place over a really long span. Did anything surprise you about the finished product?

KIRSTEN: With every movie you kind of never know how exactly it's going to come together. I had an idea but obviously I wasn't there for the last half of the movie. [She pauses briefly, considering] ...I only saw Ryan in drag once on the set so I wasn't sure how all that was going to come together.

While we were working we played things very differently; we improvised a lot. The scene where he asked me to marry him was very different in the script. We got to play around a lot which was exciting. But you never know what it's going to end up being.

I thought it was interesting that this movie  opened so close to Blue Valentine, another unravelling Ryan Gosling marriage, and then I remembered that you've worked with Michelle Williams before on Dick. Hollywood is a small world.

KIRSTEN: It is a small world. I'm friendly with Michelle. That's funny. [Pauses considering the two movies]  Ryan... he loves a good love story, that one! [laughs].

With some movie stars chemistry is a hit-and-miss thing but I've always felt from your films that you have a dependable connection to your co-stars/scene partners. What do you attribute that to? 

[Kiki's answer and her favorite films after the jump]

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Interview: Pixar's Enrico Casarosa and "La Luna"

Michael C here to give you a sneak peak of a Pixar pleasure headed your way soon.

High on the long list of reasons to love Pixar is their devotion to bringing top quality animated shorts to the movie-going masses, a tradition they are keeping alive pretty much single-handedly. And they are on a roll too. With such titles as Presto, Cloudy Day and the great Day and Night, my love of which I’ve already documented here, they are developing a body a body of work to stand beside the great catalogues of classic Disney and Warner Bros. cartoons. 

Now having attended a sneak of La Luna, the new short most of America will see attached to Brave, I am pleased to report they have another winner on their hands. La Luna is a fable about young boy caught in an inter-generational conflict as he joins his Papa and Grandpa for the first time in their nightly work. The slow reveal of the exact nature of that work is one of the film's delights which also include its elegant dialogue-free storytelling, glowing moonlit atmosphere and an especially lovely Michael Giacchino score.

La Luna is the baby of Enrico Casarosa, who is making his directing debut with this love letter to his Italian roots. He began with Pixar as a story artist on Cars and Ratatouille, and he is currently working as Head of Story for an upcoming feature. I sat down with Casarosa to discuss his new film, his influences, and to see how much I could peek behind the Pixar curtain.

Michael Cusumano: I got the impression that La Luna is a very personal film for you. Am I right in saying that? 

Enrico Casarosa, Head of Story for Pixar

Enrico Casarosa: Yeah. I really felt I wanted to find an emotional core to it and I think Pixar is pretty adamant about trying to find connections. The directors need to find that personal story to tell. So I really looked at my childhood. I grew up in Genoa, in Italy, and I grew up with our grandfather in our house, and my dad and my grandfather never got along. So I would have very long dinners where I was definitely in the middle of these two guys, talking to me but never talking to each other. So that feeling of being a little bit stuck in the middle was something I was after. And I would be really fun to try to give a positive message of a kid choosing his own - you know - it’s not Papa’s way, it’s not Grandpa’s way, but it’s his own way. So he finds his own road. I thought that was worth sharing, it could be the core of it. 

Then I mixed that with a completely fantastical kind of setting to juxtapose the very personal with something more fantastic. The inspiration to that is a lot of literature. I’m a big Italo Calvino fan. He’s a wonderful writer that we read in high school in Italy. He has, all through his novels and short stories, making the very fantastic juxtaposed with very simple characters, peasants, so that’s the kind of a feel I wanted to capture. I wanted them to be very poor, you know, working the land, fishermen. Then I thought it would really be a great juxtaposition when you find out their job is actually pretty mythical.

How is it possible to get such a personal story through such a collaborative process? [MORE AFTER THE JUMP]

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Interview Extra: Dagmara on a Hot Tin Roof

When you're writing up pieces for publication from interviews, whether for magazines or blog posts or whatnot you can rarely use everything. So why not treat them like DVD extras and toss them out a little later on? With Patrick Wilson's new TV series A Gifted Man premiering tonight, I thought what better time to revisit The Film Experience interview with his wife Dagmara Dominczyk . She was a warm and funny presence on the Higher Ground promotional trail just as she is in the movie in a key supporting role.  Hopefully more of you have had the chance to see Vera Farmiga's directorial debut since that piece went up.

I told Dagmara that I had seen her in Broadway's shortlived The Violet Hour several years ago and the conversation turned to her stage work which seguewayed to a fun Patrick moment. 

Nathaniel: Dagmara, I know you were the original understudy in Broadway's Closer in the role of "Alice". I don't know if you ever went on...

Dagmara: [Emphatically] 13 times I went on and I know every single time!

Her name is "Alice"Nathaniel: So did you see the movie later and think I could do that.

Dagmara: YEAH [Vera Farmiga laughs suddenly. Dagmara is deliciously open with her answers.]

But I didn't think "damnit why didn't I?" You know what I mean? There's a difference. Patrick and I... our dream that we talk about as a side fantasy is to do a revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. 

Vera: That would be awesome.

Nathaniel: [Momentarily stunned] God, you'd be great for those parts. That's so weird. I instantly pictured it.

Dagmara: Right?!? Hello! So he's got a few more years left to make that happen.

MORE DAGMARA FUN AFTER THE JUMP...

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Never Compromise, The Iron Linky

Feast your eyes on the first poster for The Iron Lady... [via]

I admire the concept of this poster but I think more of her face should have been showing for aesthetic reasons before it began to bled into the Parliament.  As it is it's weirdly torn up.  But perhaps you'll feel differently. You'll tell me, won't you?

Links
Antagony & Ecstasy Nick started a real trend with those 'year so far' awards
My New Plaid Pants "Thursdays Ways Not To Die" takes on Disney's Finding Nemo and you can't argue with that pie chart.
Mr Hipp Strikes! Remember when I said that Drive is one of those movies that will eventually inspire cult devotion. It's already obviously begun.
GQ Natasha VC (whose tumblr i just lurve) on Terminator 2: Judgment Day (one of my favs). Though... apparently she's pissing off some cinephiles with this.

TV Break
Gold Derby Remember how weird it was when Mad Men lost everything but Best Drama at the Emmys on Sunday. Turns out it's not so weird. 
The Critical Condition loves the new drama Revenge which features the return of the wonderful Madeleine Stowe. So do I and I only watched it to see Stowe again. Interesting that he brings up Ringer in his review because the whole time I was thinking: how come Sarah Michelle Gellar couldn't get a decent expensive show like this to headline? Ringer is just a mess and she's a much bigger star than Emily VanCamp. 

Finally...
You can head on over to Towleroad to read my interview with writer/director Andrew Haigh. His debut (scripted) feature Weekend, is a real wow, beautifully observed, well acted, consistently engaging and expressively shot... all the things that no-budget gay cinema usually lacks. There's more to this interview since our conversation spilled over past our alloted time so I might share a few more nuggets later on if I see cause. I'm hoping the film does well on the coasts and prompts further expansion. It's very good.  

Christina Hendricks on "Drive", Acting During Car Chases and That Scene

Michael C. here. I missed Margo Martindale's work on Justified, but judging by the response to her Emmy win, and by the consistently stellar level of her work, the award was no doubt well-deserved. All the same, it was hard not to mutter a curse under your breath when a name other than Christina Hendricks was called out. For four seasons on Mad Men Hendricks has been the epitome of a what a great supporting performance can accomplish. Her nuanced, deeply felt performance as Joan Holloway prevented the character from being the period caricature it could have been in lesser hands, and raised the bar for the rest of the show.

Christina Hendricks as "Blanche" in DRIVE (2011)

Now with Drive, in the small but crucial role of Blanche, Hendricks is taking that skill for finding the heart underneath flashy surfaces to the big screen. I got to chat with Hendricks recently at a press event where she arrived bright and enthusiastic fresh from the set of Mad Men. Here are some of the highlights from the event where I was able to get a few questions in:

On her confrontation with Ryan Gosling…

Christina Hendricks: We shot that very intense scene the very first day of shooting. None of really knew each other, and we were in this hundred degree creepy little hotel room. And so Nicolas came up to us and said, “I’m the kind of director - I will shoot and shoot and shoot until you tell me not to shoot. So be vocal with me and let me know if you feel comfortable with what we’ve already got” No director ever does this. It’s really a nice thing to hear.

He was just very collaborative and very understanding; because it was really intense stuff we were shooting. And because I really didn’t know Ryan yet, it was this very real feeling of fear in this very uncomfortable hot room. So it was intense to shoot, but I think it lead to a successful scene. We all got to know each other by the end of the day [laughs] All sweating together.

Michael: How much of that intensity were you ready for and how much did you experience for the first time on the day?

Christina Hendricks: I think the night before we rehearsed it so we could get the blocking down but we didn’t rehearse it emotionally. We knew where we were going to be standing. Cause we knew it was going to be a long day and we knew it was going to be hard with the entire crew in there. So we all got together the night before and said, “We’ll walk here and here and then you’ll go down and the money bag will be here.” So I wasn’t quite ready for this strong leather glove on my face and I remember my heart being like “Ba-boom! Ba-boom!” He [Gosling] is such an extraordinary actor it felt real and very much in the moment. We did that scene over and over and over, so I was an emotional wreck by the end of the day. I was crying for twelve hours straight.

Michael: It comes across. Just watching it is draining.

Christina Hendricks: It was heavy. Nicolas would be like, “Can you do one more?” and I would be like “[gasping sobs] Hold on.” And Ryan was like, “Who are you? How can you keep doing this?”

 On choosing Drive...

Christina Hendricks: I choose a project based on who’s involved and my faith in them and the script and the rest you just let go. I’d seen Nicolas’s film Bronson before we met and I was so impressed by it and so excited by it that I was like, “This guy’s going to do something cool." The end result was kind of what I imagined he would do. It was stylish and rich in color and scary and heartfelt and all these different things that I knew that he would do. I had a lot of confidence in him.

(From this point forward we could not avoid getting into SPOILERS -so read on if you've seen the movie)

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