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Flavorwire Interview: Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach on Creating ‘Frances Ha’ Together

By Jason Bailey on

Anyone who saw Greta Gerwig providing the soft, gooey center for Noah Baumbach’s sharply acidic Greenberg would understand why he’d want to cast her again; as the accidental love interest to Ben Stiller’s misanthrope, she gave a performance so nuanced yet winning and deeply felt that it sent anyone who observed it reeling for synonyms for “star quality.” His initial idea for their follow-up, Frances Ha, was vague: “I just had more general ideas that it would be something in New York and something in black and white and something with Greta,” he recalls. “I didn’t really know more than that — and maybe something that felt sort of European to me, some, like, story of youth.” But he wasn’t interested in solely collaborating as actor and director. “I suppose I had an instinct, to kind of involve her in the process of coming up with what it was going to be.” Gerwig jokes that his motivations may have been more pragmatic. “I think part of it was, he was like, ‘You’re cheap, right?’” … Read More

Television

Exclusive Video: A Morning at ‘Arrested Development’s’ Bluth Banana Stand

By Jason Bailey on

We’ve got less than two weeks till the debut of Arrested Development’s long awaited, eagerly anticipated fourth season on Netflix, and the network is kicking its promotional machine into high gear. Their cleverest promo tool: the Bluth’s Original Banana Stands that are popping up across the country (and across the pond), giving away frozen bananas in anticipation of the May 26 debut. Here in New York, the first banana stand opened up Monday morning, so your intrepid film editor grabbed a video camera and headed down to talk with some AD fans about who they’re looking forward to seeing again, what they love about the show, and how they’ll be consuming the fourth season when it all shows up early that fateful Sunday morning. … Read More

Film

A Bodybuilder Reviews Michael Bay’s ‘Pain & Gain’

By Jason Bailey on

For a Michael Bay movie, Pain & Gain is getting remarkably good reviews and positive buzz — even its negative notices are full of phrases like “the most charming Michael Bay movie in a long while.” The primary question that the film’s pro and con critics seem to be arguing over is whether Bay is satirizing the flashy excesses and over-the-top elements of the narrative or reveling in them; it’s a story about the quest for conspicuous consumption, from a filmmaker as obsessed with the idea as his characters. Complicating that question is Pain & Gain’s roots as a true story; it happened in Miami in 1994 and 1995, in the world of bodybuilding and fitness clubs. And how accurate is it to that world? I decided to find out by seeing the movie with a bodybuilder and personal trainer. … Read More

Comedy

Eddie Murphy Is “Never Gonna Be Richard Pryor”: The Comedian’s Widow on Pryor’s Rivalries (And a Threesome)

By Jason Bailey on

If you invite Tracy Morgan to your panel discussion, you’ve gotta know what you’re getting into. The comic, actor, and general crazy person was one of five interesting folks who assembled after the Tribeca Film Festival’s Wednesday screening of the wonderful new documentary Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic; he was joined by The Daily Show’s Wyatt Cenac, author Walter Mosley, Pryor’s widow Jennifer Lee Pryor (or “J,” as Morgan affectionately called her), and the film’s director, Marina Zenovich. But Morgan dominated the talk, with jokes and peculiar sidebars — until Jennifer Pryor got going, and proved as raw, candid, and devil-may-care as her late husband. … Read More

Television

Flavorwire Interview: Jim Rash on ‘Community’s’ Season 4 “Learning Curve”

By Jason Bailey on

When Dan Harmon was dismissed as showrunner of his NBC sitcom Community at the conclusion of its third season, much of the show’s writing staff followed suit, leaving the abbreviated fourth season with several new writers. However, one of those novice scripters was hardly an unfamiliar presence: Jim Rash, who has played the morally and sexually ambiguous Dean Pelton throughout the show’s run, pens this week’s episode, “Basic Human Anatomy.” It’s not a case of an actor with an itch to try something new; Rash is an Oscar-winning screenwriter (he shared the Best Adapted Screenplay statue for The Descendants with his writing partner Nat Faxon and director Alexander Payne) and, now, filmmaker (he and Faxon’s directorial debut, The Way, Way Back sold for big bucks at Sundance). But this was his first time writing for the show that made him a familiar face. … Read More

Film

5 Filmmaking Lessons From Mira Nair and Bryce Dallas Howard’s Tribeca Talk

By Jason Bailey on

“Thank you for coming, on a nice spring day, to watch us ladies in the afternoon,” Mira Nair said with a smile, as she and Bryce Dallas Howard began their “Tribeca Talks” conversation on Saturday, as part of the 12th annual Tribeca Film Festival. Nair is at the festival with her latest feature film, an adaptation of Mohsin Hamid’s novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist; Howard was there as an admirer, an actress slowly making the transition to filmmaker and looking for some pearls of wisdom from Nair’s 30-plus years in India, Hollywood, and all points in between. Here’s a few things we learned from their chat. … Read More

Television

Flavorwire Interview: Armando Iannucci Says ‘Veep’ Gets Personal in Season 2

By Jason Bailey on

Armando Iannucci’s characters, whether on his HBO series Veep, his BBC show The Thick of It, or that show’s film spin-off In the Loop, all share one common trait: a gift for inventive, ingenious insults and profanity. So while it’s not exactly a shock that Mr. Iannucci is such a cheerful, soft-spoken, and friendly chap, it is a bit of a relief; what’s surprising is that he insists, “I don’t swear myself!” In the worlds he’s writing about, “there is a fair amount of profanity but profanity can be quite dull.” With his characters, though, “we try and make it as interesting as possible so it’s not so much the swear words, it’s more the phrases around the swear words that make it more interesting.” … Read More

Film

‘Jurassic Park’: How a 2D Movie Becomes a 3D Movie

By Jason Bailey on

Today, moviegoers across the country will have the opportunity to see a 20-year-old movie on the big screen — and with an extra dimension to boot. Jurassic Park 3D is the latest case of a two-dimensional movie getting the three-dimensional (or “stereo”) treatment, following in the footsteps of several Disney titles and last year’s 3D re-release of Titanic. Since this is a new process, one that’s not yet been painstakingly demystified by DVD extras and behind-the-scenes reports, it seems, frankly, to be some sort of witchcraft; how do they take a movie that was finished two decades ago and transform it into a 3D experience? Luckily, we were able to get William Sherak to break it down for us. … Read More

Comedy

What We Learned About ‘Arrested Development,’ ‘Mr. Show,’ and “Alternative Comedy” From David Cross’ Conversation With Michael Cera

By Jason Bailey on

“Do you guys feel like you’re learning things tonight?” asked David Cross, about two-thirds of the way through “A Conversation with David Cross,” a sold-out event at New York’s 92nd Street Y Wednesday night — and though he asked it in jest, there actually were lessons to be extrapolated from his informal 95-minute chat with Arrested Development co-star Michael Cera. Here’s some of what we learned. … Read More

Film

About That Time Pam Grier Made Fried Pigeon for Federico Fellini…

By Jason Bailey on

Pam Grier is a good talker. Her stories are rich and detailed, her outlook is both funny and true, and once you get her going, you just let her go — over the course of a 50-minute “Clips and Conversation” Q&A at Lincoln Center’s Elinor Bunin Film Center Sunday afternoon, I believe she was asked four questions. She’d answer the query, and then spin off into something else, and then somewhere else, the connections sometimes tenuous, but the destination always worth the journey. The appearance came at the conclusion of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s weekend-long tribute to Grier, who tells many of these stories in her new book Foxy: My Life in Three Acts. The highlight, without question, was the tale of her unexpected meeting with Federico Fellini, and the meal she made for him in the commissary of his Italian studio. … Read More