Star Julia Louis-Dreyfus and writer/director Nicole Holofcener take part in the Q & A after TheWrap’s screening of “Enough Said”
Louis-Dreyfus on the film’s positive reception: “I said to somebody, ‘I’m really happy that audiences are responding to this movie, because it was such a personal, private expression, I would have felt like a horses ass if they didn’t’”
“Whatever is funny in there, they made it funnier,” Holofcener said about her stars Louis-Dreyfus and James Gandolfini. “Whatever is dramatic, they made it more dramatic”
“I didn’t approach it as a drama or comedy,” Louis-Dreyfus said. “I just approached it. I understood the voice, I understood Nicole’s tone. I knew what we were going for. A smallness, a rawness had to be captured”
On late co-star James Gandolfini, Holofcener said, “I wish he had seen this movie, because he was so certain he was miscast.” Louis-Dreyfus said, “It’s, of course, tragically said. Having said that, I think his performance is something to celebrate. People didn’t really know he could do this gentle, beautiful thing. It’s a triumph for him, his friends and his family”
Writer/Director Adrian Saba attends TheWrap screening of his film “The Cleaner,” the Peruvian entry at this year’s Oscars
“The feeling I wanted was for foreigners to never imagine Like they saw it here and for Limanians to see their city in a different way,” said Saba about the dystopian future his story takes place in
When asked about his inspiration for the film, Saba said, “I saw a documentary about forensic cleaners. And I found I had a conversation about death. Ideas bubble inside of you. And then the come out like champagne”
“There were days when the sun came out and we had to go to the beach, which wasn’t that bad either,” Saba recalled on how the weather played an effect on his filming schedule
“The Porcelain Horse” director Javier Andrade at TheWrap screening for his film
“There was a huge sort of drug culture that I was really sort of impressed by when I started out,” said Andrade. “And it seemed like a metaphor for something that was lacking. And I thought, if I could make a film about corruption, it would be an interesting place to start with personal corruption, and then expand that idea of corruption to the political and social arena”
“In terms of trying to think of a first thing to write, I thought it would be easier if I talked about something I knew very well, the places and people and characters,’ Andrade explained
“When I had the structure of it, I knew the end of it,” Andrade said of the fate of his main character. “Paco would survive this even and then he would change. But I was like, what can he change into that would be worse? And then I was like, he has to become a politician”
Co-directors Nana Ekvtimishvili and Simon Gross and TheWrap founder and CEO Sharon Waxman at TheWrap screening of “In Bloom”
Waxman led a post-screening Q & A with the filmmakers. Their film is the official Georgia entry for foreign language film at the 2014 Oscars
“Everything in the film is somehow related to my life at the time or my family and friends,” said Ekvtimishvili. “It was very difficult time for Georgia, but we were trying to live our normal teenage lives at the same time. Sometimes we had to make difficult decisions, and the film is about that”
“It’s a very interesting time for Georgia cinema because there are so many stories that haven’t been told for the last 20 years,” explained Gross in regards to Georgia’s film culture since the fall of the Soviet Union
A key element of the film is “bride-napping,” where young girls would be kidnapped and forced into marriage. “We know from other films that it was treated comedically,” said Ekvtimishvili. “In the ’50s and ’60s Georgian cinema, kidnapping stories were very romanticized and so funny, and never shown from the point of view of the women and what they think about it”
Actress Felicity Jones attends TheWrap screening of her latest film “The Invisible Woman”
On working with Ralph Fiennes: “Ralph Fiennes is a name that everyone associates with great acting and integrity, so I would be inhuman if I wasn’t intimidated in some way… he’s not out to intimidate you. He’s a very genuine person and I like him, so it wasn’t something where it was going to be a process working with him”
Jones addressing rumors that she and Fiennes debated on set over the character of Dickens: “obviously when you’re an actor inhabiting a part, as Ralph playing Dickens, you feel very protective over them and you want to make sure they’re seen as the full human beings that they are. And I think we had a conflict in the sense that we had different ideas about who Dickens was sometimes”
“I think you should feel with Dickens that sometimes you’re completely with him,” Jones said. “At the same time, he’s human and he’s flawed, and that’s why you go to the cinema, to see people in all their shades of greatness and fallibility”
Jones recalled a moment of fandom she had before shooting: “On the read-through, I was sitting between Ralph and Kristin Scott Thomas, and all I could think about was ‘The English Patient.’ I remember thinking, I’ve come in between them — this is terrible”
Geoffrey Rush took part in a post-screening Q & A for TheWrap’s screening of “The Book Thief”
Rush praised the film’s lead, 12-year-old Sophie Nelisse. “To suddenly work opposite someone who is 12 who was just mind-blowingly focused, graceful, disciplined, deeply moving, I found it shifted the goalposts for me for what acting is about”
“[Director Brian Percival] said, out of all the people he saw, this is the only girl who sort of threw the audition away, but revealed that she had feistiness, the vulnerability, she had secretive life that was going to be [necessary]”
Stars of the film, Yanina Studilina and Thomas Kretschmann, take part in TheWrap screening of “Stalingrad”
Kretschmann learned that laying a German soldier in a Russian film was more significant than he though: “The director came to me and said ‘Thomas, you’re not aware, but this is the first time that we in Russia show a German in that light, that he’s not a heel-clicking Nazi screaming around and shooting people all day’”
“The (biggest) part of the budget as far as I know went to building the set,” Studilina recalled. “If you came to the set, you could see every detail. It’s not done on the green screen. It took two years to build this set … You can go on a walking excursion for about 15 minutes”
Kretschmann on writing his own dialogue: “It felt great to have the trust of the director to do it, but on the other hand it felt like a terrible responsibility, because I could have said whatever I wanted to and nobody on the set would have known”
Studilina received her own critiques for her character: “Critics were really offended by the fact that a Russian woman falls in love with a German soldier. But I personally think love can transcend national, religious, language, any barriers… For Masha, love was a cocoon that kept away the horror of war”
Star Brie Larson and director Destin Daniel Cretton at TheWrap screening of indie hit “Short Term 12”
“I read so many scripts,” said Larson, “and it’s just certain things that make sense to me when they’re on the page. And Grace was that for me — there was never a moment when I didn’t know how to approach a given scene… it made so much sense to me”
“This script is everything — it’s so surprising and unexpected, and it takes you to these places that are really emotionally devastating. But there’s always hope at the end”
“I initially felt very under qualified to write in the female voice,” said Cretton. “But this process has kind of made me see how in a lot of cases, there’s not that much difference. All humans go through the same emotion, and I completely relate to everything Grace goes through in this movie.” He joked, “I also have three sisters to check things on”
“I think there’s something about (Brie) that’s extremely strong, very, very strong, and strong enough to be vulnerable, which I think is pretty difficult, and requires quite a bit of maturity”
Director Chris Wedge at TheWrap screening for “Epic.” The film took 15 years to get to the screen. “I used to think it’s a marathon, because it takes so long,” said Wedge, “but it’s like a sprint, in that time. It’s a 26-and-a-half-mile sprint
“When you pitch a new idea, it kind of has to hit a bunch of targets at once,” said Wedge. “And I think one of my issues with this movie was that that wasn’t obvious to people. And to their credit, Fox finally got behind this and then just opened up the floodgates”
“It took the 500 people that you saw going by in those credits three-and-a-half or four years to put on that screen. So now I can say, ‘see this is what I meant’”
Director Gyan Correa and executive producer Vikramjit Roy at TheWrap screening of India’s Oscar entry “The Good Road”
“I’ve always felt that roads are a kind of artery of the society, and the people on the roads that I traveled, their stories are never told, at least in contemporary cinema,” said Correa. “It’s all these different cultures and economic groups coming together on the highway and co-existing together”
“It’s very tricky to balance three stories and get the flow right,” Correa explained, “my next film will not be three stories — of that, I’m sure”
On having his film selected as India’s entry for the best foreign language film at the Academy Awards: “I have seen the other films that were in contention, and I’m glad I didn’t make the decision, because they were all damn good”
Director Kim Mordaunt and TheWrap CEO and found Sharon Waxman at TheWrap screening series of Mordaunt’s film “The Rocket”
Mordaunt’s film won the Audience Award at the AFI Film Festival and is Australia’s Foreign Language entry for the Academy Awards
Mordaunt originally created a documentary about the bombing of Laos during the Vietnam War, which led to the inspiration for “The Rocket.” Mordaunt said, “their imaginations were so pure, so alive, that I thought, if I make another film, I want it to be about these kids”
“They’re trying to break cycles of hatred,” said Mordaunt about the Laos people, “they don’t want that any more, and they want to turn what is a very dark history into something positive and beautiful”
Star Casey Affleck and director Scott Cooper at TheWrap screening for “Out of the Furnace”
Allfeck and Cooper took part in a post-screening Q & A with TheWrap awards columnist Steve Pond.
Cooper expressed to the audience how personal this film was compared to his previous: “This one happens to be far more personal than that, and autobiographical, and that makes it harrowing to release a film lie this; painful to write; sometimes difficult to shoot; but ultimately cathartic”
“You never want to be overt with anything that you’re making an issues movie,” said Cooper, “… because really and most importantly I wanted these to be about real, flesh-and-blood humans”
“It was required that I look like I could actually be in a fight, and wouldn’t just be pummeled by these guys,” Affleck joked about the training for his role, “and I don’t think we achieved that”
Director Felix van Groeningen and stars Johan Heldenburgh and Veerle Baetens at TheWrap screening of “Broken Circle Breakdown”
Groeningen, Heldenburgh and Baetens take part in a Q &A with TheWrap’s Sharon Waxman for a packed house
Heldenburgh on the use of Bluegrass in the film: “I couldn’t imagine doing it with another kind of music, because it had to be that honest and full integrity… and have that devotion to a higher being”
“It was emotionally draining to make,” said Groening. ” The first day of shooting, first shot, first take was in the hospital, and I started crying during the take, and it didn’t stop for the next two months”
Baetens and Heldenburgh surprised the audience by performing a couple of duets from the film. The soundtrack has become the best-selling album in Belgium in the last 10 years
Director Yizmal Erdogan and star Belcim Bilgin take part in TheWrap screening of their film “The Butterfly’s Dream”
Erdogan told a packed house that the film helped raise the awareness for the two poets at the center of the film: “After releasing [the film], their books became best sellers… and the movie became itself, a happy ending”
“I love true stories,” said Erdogan, “because you are writing with God, your co-writer”
Bilgin played Suzan, the woman who served as the muse for the film’s two poets, and she said she played her character with a true sense of innocence
Erdogan added, “… we are all innocent, but the world is not. Suzan is a symbol of today’s audience”
Italy’s entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars is Paolo Sorrentino’s “The Great Beauty” as part of TheWrap screening series
“It’s easy to recognize the beauty of Rome,” Sorrentino said, ” and there is beauty hidden inside all the characters in this movie”
“There are many things I hate in the movie, said Sorrentino, “but in doing the movie, I found that I can also feel a tenderness for the things I hate… After his movie, I hate a little bit less”
Sorrentino’s film has drawn many comparisons to Federico Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita.” Sorrentino on that comparison: “Fellini’s a genius, so I can’t say I mind. But I am a little big scared of this comparison”
Producer T Bone Burnett and star Oscar Isaac attend TheWrap screening of the Coen brother’s latest “Inside Llewyn Davis”
Isaac compared Burnett to “The Karate Kid’s” Mr. Miayagi, “just stripping away all the … wax?… stripping away all the artifice to get to the Crane-kick”
“I heard about (the part) on the internet, and then I told my representation that they were fired if they didn’t get me into this room,” said Isaac
“When you’re like right here and the guy’s singing and playing, for real,” said Burnett, “you get so much more details bout that performance, than you ever can doing a virtual version of it later”
Burnett autographs the poster after the Q & A with TheWrap awards columnist Steve Pond
Producer Chris Melendandri at TheWrap screening for “Despicable Me 2.” “The process of making this movie was magical; it was a story that began to tell itself,” said Melendandri, “I never had that experience before, especially going from the first to a second movie”
Musician Pharrell Williams composed the music for the film, and said “It’s like a roller coaster – a curated ride. You’re going to go up when they want you to go up and you’re going to swerve left when they want you to swerve left”
“The role those two songs play in establishing Gru’s character and defining the tone for the movie is extraordinary,” said Melendandri in regards to William’s theme songs
“Neighboring Sounds” director Kleber Mendonca Filho talks about his film after the screening.
“You can live a perfectly peaceful life in Brazil,” said Mendonca regarding the film’s locale, “but many times there’s a sense of dread and fear that comes from different class relations”
Mendonca on his editing process: “I think the whole process is very interesting when you have that much time to make a film. It’s almost like making bread. When you leave the dough in the oven for some time, it grows”
Producer Rudi Teichmann, actress Juliane Kohler and director Georg Maas at TheWrap screening of “Two Lives”
Kohler, Maas and Teichman take part in the Q & A led by TheWrap founder and CEO Sharon Waxman
“For us it was very important that my character was not only the bad characters,” said Kohler, “it’s not divided in good and bad”
Maas says he “wanted it to be a film about not judging… ‘we are the good ones, they are the bad ones’… that’s the salt of war”
“Nebraska” star Bruce Dern and TheWrap’s awards columnist Steve Pond hold a Q & A after screening the film
Dern, a veteran character actor, on finally get his chance to lead a movie: “I felt like I was never going to get an at-bat. Then I got the call and it felt like it was the bottom of the 9th and we were down a run”
“I didn’t just want to be in it, I had to be in it” says Dern
Dern’s former actor instructor Lee Strasburg told him “for the first decade, you’re going to be the third cowboy from the right, but you’ll be the most interesting third cowboy from the right”
Dern entertained the packed theater with praise of his co-stars Will Forte and June Squibb and stories from his career that include Marilyn Monroe, Alfred Hitchcock and Elia Kazan
Actor Amrita Acharia and director Iram Haq at TheWrap screening for “I’m Yours”
Amrita on working with the young actor who played her son: “… in a sense we got such an authentic performance out of him because the lines between real life and acting were blurred”
“It’s really often that we see female characters being as good as a person as possible,” Haq said about the film’s main character, “this is a normal human being”
TheWrap editor Josh Dickey leads the post-screening Q &A with Amrita and Haq
Haq said she “wanted to make a real personal story; I wanted to make a very naked and true story… it’s been a hard journey”
Director Steve McQueen, stars Chiwetel Ejiofor and Lupita Nyong’o and TheWrap founder Sharon Waxman hold a Q & A after the screening of “12 Years a Slave”
Newcomer Nyong’o said that she was able to get comfortable on set when co-star Michael Fassbender assured her that she was his peer
The packed house had many questions for the film’s stars after the screening.
Ejiofor said he “felt the responsibility of (the role). It led me down a route of questioning if I could do that. I wondered how i could make the connection with Solomon”
“This is not an African-American film,” said McQueen, “it’s an American film.” Said that his intention was to have audiences “actually experience slavery as if you’d gone through it”
Teller talked about “Tim’s Vermeer,” his unlikely documentary project, following TheWrap screening.
Teller, a normally quiet magician, talks to the audience during the Q & A for “Tim’s Veermeer.”
Steve Pond, awards editor at TheWrap, moderates the Q & A with Teller.
Teller told the crowd “Tim’s Vermeer” grew out of a dinner between him, magic partner Penn Jillette, and old friend Tim Jenison.
Actor Barkhad Abdi, TheWrap founder and CEO Sharon Waxman, and director Paul Greengrass posed for a photo at the “Captain Phillips” screening.
Greengrass says he did not want to make a fluffy, Hollywood pirate movie.
“I didn’t want Johnny Depp,” the director says, taking a good-natured shot at the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise.
Paul Greengrass, Barkhad Abdi and Sharon Waxman have a lively exchange during the “Captain Phillips” Q & A.
Barkhad Abdi says he has an agent now and is pursuing other roles.
Paul Greengrass says he chose newcomer Barkhad Abdi for “Captain Phillips” due to his audition’s “Mixture of menace and humanity.”
This year’s wave of movies focusing on black characters is a sign of progress in American culture, says ”Fruitvale Station” writer/director Ryan Coogler –but “there’s still plenty of room to go.”
Coogler says a number of factors inspired the recent boom in films with black protagonists, including President Barack Obama’s re-election and a new crop of filmmakers from different demographics.
“I knew this was the kind of film that would live or die by whoever was in that lead role,” Coogler told Waxman of his movie’s leading man, Michael B. Jordan.
Coogler signs a “Fruitvale Station” poster. The movie is based on a real-life 22-year-old Bay Area man, who was shot dead in 2009 by a police officer during an altercation at Oakland, Calif.’s Fruitvale BART station on New Year’s Day.
“More Than Honey” director Markus Imhoff participates in a Q&A at TheWrap screening series.
Steve Pond started off a Q&A with director Markus Imhoof by asking, “How many times did you get stung making this movie?” Imhoof says, “We had a contest on the team, but in the end I won.”
Any temporary deformities Imhoof suffered were worth it for a stunningly cinematic documentary that includes the most lovingly photographed close-ups of insects since Saul Bass fetishized ants in the 1970s with “Phase IV.”
“We filmed with very sophisticated cameras,” Imhoof says “and all the flying bees are filmed at 300 frames a second.”
Cullen Hoback says he felt an “impotent frustration” when he was filming “Terms and Conditions May Apply,” his documentary about Americans’ laissez-faire attitude about being constantly monitored by social-media services and the NSA.
“When I was shooting this, there was a real sense that no one was listening,” Hoback tells Waxman and the crowd at a Q&A following TheWrap’s screening of the documentary.
“You need to have some sort of probable cause to go digging around in people’s private stuff,” Hoback says.
Hoback signs a poster for “Terms and Conditions May Apply.” For the film’s moments of levity, Hoback relies on original animation and old film clips to illustrate his points about digital-age privacy.
