Ann Dowd: Playing Patti on "The Leftovers"

The Film Experience is proud to turn the site over to Ann Dowd for the day. Enjoy...

As Patti Levin on "The Leftovers"

-by Ann Dowd

Finding the character of Patti on The Leftovers was a fascinating experience. I remember having a lot of questions about her when I first read the script. It was scary at first, it was daunting the not speaking. “What is this about? How are you going to play this?” There are always so many questions for an actor. You think “Where is this person? How am I going to find her?” And then the thought came, "Take a breath, settle down, The information will present itself." And sure enough it did.

There are always clues when you’re searching for a character. Not speaking actually turned out to be an incredibly powerful position to be in and here's a clue: make sure you know what the character wants because you are not going to be able to tell anybody with words so it has to be in your whole being. Other clues turned up each time, episode by episode: what she responded to, what she didn’t respond to, her intense aggression toward Kevin, trying to understand why.

It’s a process and in those first episodes, I had just enough to do to slowly put that picture together. [More after the jump...]

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"Are you a Catholic?" (Actually No, But I *Get* It)

For The Lusty Month of May, we're looking at a few sex scenes. Here's Nathaniel...

They like to say that people come into your lives for a reason. Also true of movies. When I saw Priest (1994) in its American release in 1995, I was just out of the closet but still very much struggling with having been a strict Mormon for then roughly 100% of my life. The movie is about a gay Priest (Linus Roache) who struggles with his vows .... and not just the sexual ones. It hit me in a seismic way. This had never happened to me before or since but I started crying at the end and actually couldn't stop until after the credits had ended. 

Where you are in life can dictate a lot about how you receive a movie. But this series is about sex scenes so let's narrow our focus. Today Priest's sex scene, which I had liked (okay, obsessed over - shut up) back then plays super tame. Why did it shock me then? I have the answer in 2015 watching it again...

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Stage Door: Hand to God

Dancin' Dan here for one of my favorite times of the year: TONY TIME! When the Tony nominations were announced, I had my usual reactions of shock and awe (congrats to all the supporting ladies from Fun Home, but did we really have to include all of them at the expense of their counterparts from On The Town?), but what made me happiest were the multiple nominations for Hand to God, hands-down the best play I’ve seen on Broadway in ages.

When you walk into the Booth Theater (most recently the home to Bradley Cooper’s Elephant Man), you’re immediately greeted with cheery posters extolling the beauty of the world and God’s hand in creating it, along with heavily southern-fried Christian country-rock. If you’ve ever been in a church school, the set will look freakily familiar… do all of these things look alike? But then the lights go down, and we’re greeted by… a sock puppet. This sock puppet’s name is Tyrone, and despite his adorable appearance, he has some not-so-adorable thoughts on his mind.

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Black History Month: Pulp Fiction (1994)

Our Black History Month through the lens of Oscar continues with Jason on Samuel L. Jackson...

If you'd like a master class in screen-acting (not to mention a Minor in Pronouncing Vulgarity in New & Unique Ways) then you couldn't do much better than by studying the two times Sam Jackson's called upon to recite his character's favorite Bible scripture, Ezekiel 25:17, in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. The scenes essentially bookend the film with Jules holding an audience captive through just the conviction of his delivery. Hardly the last time Sam would manage that feat.

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Mom, James Franco & Jack Black Are Confused About Their Sexuality Again!

This article was originally published in a slightly shorter version in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad

Nathaniel reporting from Sundance. One of the most interesting trends of this year's Sundance Film Festival is confrontational stories about people being pushed out of or willfully stepping away from their sexual comfort zones. The Diary of a Teenager Girl has earned the best reviews and the most press but let's discuss two films with more LGBT appeal.  I Am Michael, a drama about religion and homosexuality, and The D Train, a comedy about a high school reunion, both feature grown men whose lives spiral out of control when they stray from their true selves. [More...]

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