It’s hard to think of two funnier people in Hollywood today than Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart. The former is perhaps more beloved than any other comic out there, thanks to a long career of lead roles in comedy classics like Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Elf, Taladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, and Blades of Glory. Meanwhile, the latter has experienced a meteoric rise to fame in recent years, using films like Think Like A Man, Ride Along, and About Last Night to go from high-grossing stand-up comedian to A-list actor.

As the two joined forces for this month’s Get Hard, they were kind enough to set aside some time to answer questions from college journalists in a 15-minute conference call. Here’s what they had to say:

Q: As two very successful comedians, is there anything you guys learned from one another while working on the film?

Kevin Hart: The one thing I’ve taken from Will is his approach to his craft. He’s very professional, very humble; he’s a guy that really appreciates everything. He’s grounded.
Will Ferrell: Yes, I think Kevin and I share the same philosophy in terms of, you know we like to have a good time, but we’re thankful for what we’re doing professionally. But at the same time we try and stay grounded and work hard.

Q: What was it like working with director Etan Cohen, given it was his first time directing?

WF: It was a great experience working with Etan. You know, we surrounded him with a really good team, in terms of the first a.d. [Assistant Director] and director of photography. So, he was allowed to do what his strong point is, which is monitoring the comedy. You know, it’s a real benefit when you can have a writer as strong as Etan feeding you extra jokes.
KH: From my side, I’ll pick up off what Will said. We got lucky, we got a guy who had his first time directing, though he had been behind the camera a lot, so he soaked up this knowledge. He was protected by a team of producers, who knew what they were doing as well. All in all, everyone helped each other. Etan’s confidence grew as the movie progressed and we got a final product because of it, so I tip my hat to him. He did a good job.

Q: How did Cohen end up taking the reins on Get Hard, and what made you want to work with him?

WF: Yes, Etan is obviously an established comedy writer here in Hollywood, given his track record. And I think he was just in town on a short list of guys who were ready to direct a feature; he had done a short film that had attracted some notice. But when you talked to him about a script, in terms of his articulation on story, he sounded like he was a director. And I think that’s what kind of gave us the confidence to want to work with him. 

Plus, he also, in like a 1920s or 1930s way, wore those old khaki director pants and spoke through a bullhorn, so those things really make him appear as a director.

Q: What originally made you guys want to do this movie?

WF: Well, this was an idea that my friend Adam McKay had for a long time, and we kept talking about it. So we kind of generated the idea from our company. And as we started digging into the casting, and we thought it would be really great to pair up with, well, the first name we started with: Kevin. So we called him up, pitched him the idea, and lucky for us he was into it. He kind of helped right away in the development process, from the script to his character. That’s how it all kind of came together.

Q: Was there much improvisation on set, or did you guys mostly stick to script?

KH: Well, there was something on every page of the script, of course, but from that foundation, there was room for us to move around. We had great writers on the film, and they left room for us to explore our characters and play around.

Q: Why is it important to have the ability to laugh at some of the important social tensions you guys touch on in Get Hard?

WF: I think it’s a great way to explore our differences, once you kind of get through the chatter, we kind of realize how similar we all are. And you get that by examining through social comedy and you’re just able to point out how silly these attitudes are, that seem to pop up from time to time.
KH: Well I can’t say it better than that.

Q: We’re in the age of remakes as a culture. So as a comedy duo, if you guys could team up again and remake a classic comedy, which ones would you do?

KH: Turner and Hooch!
WF: Well, Kevin’s choice is Turner and Hooch.
KH: Turner and Hooch! It would be amazing!
WF: I believe that was Tom Hanks with a dog.
KH: Yeah, you playing Hooch!
WF: Okay, I want Hooch. All right, my choice … oh remake of a classic comedy! Kramer vs. Kramer!

Q: When you guys were preparing for the role, were there any prison movies or television shows that helped you prepare for the role?

KH: For me, yes, I watched a lot of Mask and Sanford and Son. It really put me in the position where I was ready to come to set every day and it got me ready for every day.
WF: I watched a lot of shows on the cooking channel. It didn’t help me at all. It was actually just a waste of time and if I had to do it over again, I wouldn't have watched those shows.

Read Isaac's review of the film GET HARD here: http://www.nufec.com/blog/isaac-feldberg-on-get-hard

Danny Collins tells the story of a washed-up, but enormously successful, singer-songwriter (Al Pacino) who hit his prime in the early 1970s and hasn’t seen personal fulfillment in half a lifetime. Decades of singing the same songs over and over again have brought Collins to rock bottom, which happens to be the bottom of a whiskey glass. 

The story opens with a grandiose concert that Collins goes through methodically and then drinks the memory away quickly after. What’s actually unique about this story? Decades after giving an interview, just as his fame was coming into play, John Lennon wrote him a letter asking to meet up and discuss his future. The letter was lost in delivery, but winds up in Danny Collins hands 40 years later.

“What could have been?” That’s the question Collins tries to answer by canceling his tour, reconnecting with his son he never met in New Jersey, and flirting with a hotel manager. Can a hard drinking, fast living hot shot rock star start anew? Does everyone get a second chance? Can there be a character rebirth? These are the questions we have to answer watching this, and it’s excruciating. Jeff Bridges played a similar character in Bad Blake in the film, Crazy Heart in which he won the Oscar for Best Actor. That film took a similar plot and made it small and intimate, and the music was actually good. Danny Collins is a Paul McCartney- Tom Jones fusion that just doesn't deliver. The story is wrapped in cliches about rock stars and put into a world that doesn't even feel lived in. Everything feels built and clean like a set. Collins’ home, the hotel, and even the venues he plays in - none feel real. In fact, everything feels forced, including Al Pacino’s presence in the movie, in which he plays himself: classic “Whoo-ah” Pacino riding his celebrity charm into the shoes of Danny Collins. 

Dan Fogelman (writer of Crazy Stupid Love) makes his directorial debut with this post-Oscar season effort. That’s exactly what it is: an effort. Al Pacino is not the actor he once was, and his name can’t save a movie that’s so poorly written, produced, and directed. But I will take one tip from the Danny Collins book of regret: drink to forget.

A lot has changed since the first “Horrible Bosses” hit theaters in 2011. Jason Bateman went back to resurrected cult comedy “Arrested Development” for a fourth season on Netflix and directed his first feature film, the terrific “Bad Words.” Meanwhile, Jason Sudeikis got married, had a son and appeared in “We’re the Millers,” one of his biggest movies to date. Charlie Day also had a son, returned to his popular sitcom “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” and fought for the survival of the human race in sci-fi spectacle “Pacific Rim.”

So it’s fitting that in “Horrible Bosses 2,” the central trio, played by Bateman, Sudeikis and Day, has also experienced some pretty huge changes. After surviving their harebrained scheme to take out their respective horrible bosses, Nick (Bateman), Kurt (Sudeikis) and Dale (Day) have opted instead to become their own bosses. Banding together, the trio launched a business and hit it big with a product called the Shower Buddy. However, when a slick investor (Christoph Waltz) cons them out of their own business, Nick, Kurt and Dale decide to kidnap the investor’s adult son (Chris Pine) and hold him for ransom. Predictably, things get out of control pretty quickly.

“It was really fun for the three of us to get back together again,” said Day in a conference call with college journalists, “because we enjoy each other’s company and we had such a great time making the first one.”

Day admits, though, that “Horrible Bosses 2” may not be quite as much fun for their characters: “It’s a terrible thing for the three of these people to get back together again because they keep getting themselves into some serious shit,” he said with a laugh. The actor isn’t kidding. Even with all the craziness that was on display in the first film, this sequel ups the ante. It won’t, the actors all agreed, simply offer fans more of the same.

“You know, it would be pressure-packed if we were doing the same material. I don’t think that we can do that first film — I don’t think that we’d be able to repeat that performance in that film again,” Bateman said. “But this is all new material, and we haven’t seen it before. Basically, we get a nice, free shot at it.”

Bateman was also enthusiastic about the amount of screen-time that he, Sudeikis and Day share this time around. We have “every scene together,” he said. “Which is a crazy notion that I couldn’t have enjoyed more. But the first movie we spent the first thirty minutes in each of our own little movie with our own horrible boss and in this one it’s just right off the bat all three sitting next to each other on a couch.”

The actor also teased a bigger budget and the perks that come with this sequel. “We also got to do a little bit of green screen work [which is] more usually relegated to the big effects movies, so it was neat to be a part of that process,” Bateman said.

Day also described Pine’s character, who is with the main trio for much of the film, as a “fourth musketeer” of sorts.
“He brought a lot to it,” Day said.
“He brought a lot of hotness,” Sudeikis added.
“Someone had to do it,” Bateman followed.

The story isn’t the only thing different this time around. “That’s My Boy” director Sean Anders stepped in for previous director Seth Gordon, and “Horrible Bosses” scribes John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein were joined by Anders and his co-writer John Morris.

Sudeikis called the experience of working with Anders and Morris “great,” adding that they “are two of the best script writers in Hollywood right now. At least I think so. They did a great job with the re-writing of ‘We’re the Millers’ so it was like having two other writers on set with us,” he said.

Visually, Anders did his own thing on the sequel. “There’s a whole chunk in the middle where it almost looks like a gosh darn Steven Soderbergh film that he had in his head,” Sudeikis said. “And then even the stuff of us starting the business, all the visual elements to it that feel like a Fincher movie, it’s like something right out of ‘Fight Club.’”

Adding an acclaimed actor like Waltz and bringing back Kevin Spacey improved the atmosphere on set, Bateman said.  “It was pretty cool. When you can, this is a big kind of silly commercial studio comedy, and when you can class it up with some Oscar winners, it’s a really nice balanced cocktail,” he said.

“Everyone loves a properly mixed cocktail... Don’t want anything too straight. It was really cool to work with all those people. Everyone really seemed to understand what we were making and that made for a good time,” Bateman said.
Co-stars like Keegan-Michael Key and Jonathan Banks also added to the stars’ anticipation for the sequel.

“It’s really flattering to make the first one and have it exist and then when you’re making the second one to have people say, ‘Oh yeah, I want to be a part of that,’” Sudeikis said. Sudeikis added that, “I’ve known Keegan forever, there’s a lot of Second City people in this movie and you love the fact that they want to come on board.”

Though this sequel and its predecessor have both found the stars grappling with truly despicable overseers, the actors couldn’t think of any horrible bosses they’ve personally experienced. “I started acting so young that I never really had a traditional boss but I’ve certainly worked for some prickly directors, movie stars, producers [and] studio heads. I have no horror stories that I can think of,” Bateman said. “But my knees are bent - I’m waiting for a real son-of-a-bitch to come my way. I’m prepped.”

The actor added that, to one little girl in particular, he himself may be a horrible boss. “I tossed my two-year-old into the car pretty quickly this morning. I think she’d probably tell you that I’m a real asshole, but we were late for school goddamnit,” he joked.

Will audiences respond to “Horrible Bosses 2” with as much enthusiasm as they did the first film? The jury’s still out, but Bateman certainly thinks so.  “I’m pretty good about being objective, and I really enjoyed the first one as a viewer,” the actor said. “I watched this one with that same perspective and I genuinely liked it even more than the first. So I’m actually feeling kind of bullish. If people see it the way I see it, they’re going to be very happy with this one. I’m feeling good.”

Added Day: “I expect people to be skeptical, and I hope that they’re pleasantly surprised.”

Question [to Lowry]: How much involvement did you have in making the film as a writer?

Lowry: I had no official involvement, but they decided that they would consult me, I guess would be the best term. Phillip, the director, throughout the process emailed me, almost every day, sometimes three times a day, just with little questions. They had me look at Odeya’s screen-test before she was cast, they had me look at costume designs, there was one dress they had designed for you [Odeya], and I said it was too sexy, she’s not supposed to be sexy. Make her dress a little longer, it was very short. So I was involved throughout the process but not officially.

[to Rush and Thwaites]: So what attracts you guys to a film like this? Because it’s not a Hunger Games sort-of action movie, it’s a more… thoughtful movie.

Rush: I think so many elements of this project attracted me to it. I mean, when you look at it, you see Phillip Noyce is attached to it, Jeff Bridges is attached, it’s based on a book by Lois Lowry, all those things already make it very attractive. But I think, after reading the script and being so moved and seeing a characters who’s so challenging and has such a journey, it’s one of those scripts that I read that that made me keep thinking about it. I mean I had the audition the night I was reading the script, right before the audition, but it’s one of those projects that stays in your head and makes you think about it a lot and every time I think about this movie and every time I do an interview, there’s something else that comes up there’s a new idea that comes up, new questions that arise.

Thwaites: Well for me it was the chance to work with Phillip Noyce, he’s one of my favorite directors. As a kid, seeing all these Aussie movies, he’s one of those directors that Australian directors look up to because he’s made it in Hollywood, he’s made some great films, and I guess this is his big chance to come back into the big screen. So I really wanted to work with Phil, Jeff Bridges was onboard at this point, and I was super excited to work with Jeff, I’m a huge fan. Then I read the book and I discovered that the story was so powerful and had a great message. Those mixed together was a cocktail of excitement.  

[to Thwaites and Rush] What was it like getting to work with someone like Jeff Bridges or Meryl Streep so early in your careers?

Thwaites: Well, 18 years before we got to work with him, Lois Lowry got to work with him…

Lowry: Well no, nothing happened for those years, we kept talking about it.

[to Lowry]: So he bought the rights to the book?

Lowry: Eighteen years ago, he bought the rights. He was going to direct it, and we was going to star his father in it, Lloyd Bridges [as the Giver], who was a fine actor. Then it just never got put together, never got financed, and his father died. And after time passed, he realized he could play the role.

Thwaites: Oh, sorry, we kind of hijacked your question. Yeah, it was great, it was such an opportunity as a young actor. It can be quite nerve-wracking to meet them and start that relationship. But Jeff’s such a cool guy. He welcomed me, especially, with open arms, and in a way that’s something that the Giver does, so it’s a nice parallel.

Rush: Yeah, you know, Jeff is also a very giving person. He is someone who has sat me down and given me advice on the press stuff and filming, don’t be afraid to be the fool and just jump in. He tells you stories about when he was younger and stories about his dad and he is someone who is very giving and open. And the fact that I got to work with him so early in my career is going to have such a huge impact on what I do next, and it has, I think, on every role I’ve approached since then, it’s really changed.

[to Lowry] So I know that some fans are nervous about how their beloved book is being translated to a movie, so what would you tell those fans?

Lowry: I would tell them: “Relax”. I think people lose eight of the fact that a movie and a book are two different things, and you can love a book, but it’s never going to be exactly the same on the screen. And you just gotta relax and let it happen.

Thwaites: You know, the parts of Harry Potter that weren’t on the screen, originally I was kind of annoyed but they’re still in my mind and I can keep them to myself, and in a way that’s kind of cool. You keep the moments that aren’t transferred to the screen to yourself and they can be your moments.

[to Lowry]: So are you happy with the way the book has been adapted for screen? Because they’re two totally different mediums…

Lowry: It is, and I knew that from the start, I’ve always been a movie buff. So I didn’t think, or expect, or even hope that the book would become the movie and be exactly the same, that’s just not going to happen. The one thing that worried me, and I know it worried Jeff as well, was the decision to make the characters older than they are in the book, in the book they’re twelve. And that decision was made for several different reasons, and was simply that marketing, that the movie would have a larger audience if the cast was older. Apparently marketing research told them that teenagers won’t go see movies about twelve-year olds. Another reason that I had not even thought about, is that twelve-year olds, in a movie, can only work a certain number of hours.

Rush: You can work 9 hours, and 3 of them have to be schooling; it’s how I used to work…

Lowry: Yeah, so it makes the movie more expensive, it takes longer to make it. So at any rate, I was worried about it, Jeff was worried enough about it that he almost withdrew from the movie when he heard that the kids were going to be older. And then both of us got over it. When we met the kids who were going to play the roles, saw them on the screen, and saw that it was going to work. Because they had the same air of youth, naivety, and vulnerability that the characters in the book have. They’re older but they have the same characteristics, so it works. 

This week, I got a chance to sit down for a round table interview with Mike Cahill and Michael Pitt, director-writer and lead actor of I Origins. We talked about the inspiration for the film, some of the technical aspects of making it, and why small sci-fi films can talk about love and other universal concepts.

Question: What was the inspiration for the movie? Where did you come up with the ideas?

Mike Cahill: It came from a June 1987 cover of National Geographic magazine, "Afghan Girl" photograph taken by Steve McCurry. It’s a really iconic photograph and she has these stunning green eyes, it’s the feature that’s most prominent about the picture. And what was interesting is Steve, the photographer, didn’t know her name or anything. She came in, it was in a refugee camp in Pakistan, took the picture, and off she went, to play with her friends or whatever. And that photo turned out to be super famous, and for years and years and years he would get letters saying: “Who is this person? Who is this person?”, and he didn’t know. He didn’t know her name, she didn’t sign a release form. So 17 years later they went to go and track her down but they didn’t know what she looked like. The one thing that they did know is what her eyes were like, because of those piercing green eyes. And that’s when I started to learn about iris biometrics, that this a real thing that everybody’s eyes are unique, that from a photograph you can get an iris scan, which is basically the cracks and crevices in the eyes, you can extract those from a photograph and get a unique, it looks like a social security number code, 12 digits. And your eyes stay the same your whole entire life. And they went and they mounted this expedition to try and find her and a bunch of different women were potential candidates, they had these piercing green eyes and they say “I think that might have been me”, and they had a biometrics company scan the eyes and it wasn’t her, it wasn’t the next one, it wasn’t the next one, until eventually they found her, Sharbat Gula. And I started thinking that it was so interesting looking for someone based on their eyes, and then what if, after we die, our eyes come back, in newborns. And if you present that sort of very simple data to a scientist, who has more atheistic tendencies, how would they grapple with that, especially if that person was someone they loved. 

Question: [to Michael Pitt] So how does something like that get pitched to you? What drew you to this film?

Michael Pitt: Money... [laughs]. I met Mike in Brooklyn, we both live in Brooklyn, and I kinda met him in a general meeting, and I was really taken by him. He had about 5 or 6 projects in his head. And he talked to me about I Origins, the idea of I Origins, and I could see that he had the whole movie in his head. At that point there wasn’t a script but everything was there, it was just a matter of him putting it down on paper. And I just kind of casually said: “That project, that particular project we were talking about was really interesting to me, you should try to put some time into it when you get the chance.” And like two, two and a half, three weeks later the first draft was on paper. And that script… was pretty much the script. Yeah, we changed things, like nuances, dialogue, we certainly worked with the actors. And he was really gracious about letting me develop my character. Filmmaking, at its core, I think is a collaborative art form. Some people get that and some people don’t and Mike is able to really grab gems from everyone, he’s super talented, but he’s also able to really keep a focus on what his mission is, and that’s a hard thing, not everyone has that. 

Question: I wanted to talk about the way you shot the film. With Another Earth you had a lot of handheld shots, and in this it seems like you didn’t have as many, you wanted to go with something different.

Mike Cahill: We still have a lot of handheld shots, they’re a little bit more stabilized. And I wanted to try, I mean, I was going for a sort of poetic realism. Handheld has a sort of an alive feeling to it. But I worked with this great cinematographer Markus Forderer. I saw a film that he shot in Switzerland, well he didn’t shoot it in Switzerland, I saw it there, and I sort of tracked him down and I’m like “I need to work with this guy”, like I could feel that we were in sync. And we were lucky to be able to shoot this film with two cameras simultaneously for most of it, two Reds, an Epic and a Scarlet, and I would operate one and he would operate the other. And it was amazing, it allowed us the ability to capture really wonderful gems. But also I wanted to experiment, to push and find some new boundaries, new land in terms of techniques and aesthesis. The film for example, for example, has a double vertigo shot, the first time ever in movie where we harnessed this tool, this robotic techo-crane that you can program all the positions of the camera into. So it allowed us to do a vertigo shot in, 180, and do a vertigo shot out, in one continuous move.

Question: Did you have more toys to play with then on Another Earth?

Mike Cahill: Yeah, a little bit more…

Question: Another Earth wasn’t on Red, was it?

Mike Cahill: Another Earth was on the Sony EX-3. And it shot 1080p, actually we shot 720p. And it was like, I remember when we sold it to Fox they were like: “Is there any way we can make the picture, like… better?” And I’m like: “…Um, what do you mean?’ And they’re like: “I don’t know, just better.” But this we shot in 4K so it’s like “boom!” And there’s so many visual effects shots that are invisible in there…

Michael Pitt: We have 200 visual effects shots in the film. The eyes of the little girl are done in post…

Question: Well, you know it’d be kind of hard to find two people with the exact same eyes…

Michael Pitt: For me it’s the best way to use visual effects. Mike was using I would say really current, state-of-the-art equipment for this movie, but I don’t see this movie being dated. You’ll never see that, and that’s the hardest thing to do with visual effects. You get all this new gear and, you know, very often the filmmakers will just exploit it, it’s just there, it’s all out in the open, and then five years later it’s just like: “Yeah, it’s actually not that cool anymore.” So to do it seamlessly is a really precise thing, and what they were doing with those eyes, putting those eyes, Astrid’s eyes in Kashish’s head, is really complicated. That’s really really complicated work. To be honest, when he was talking about it, Mike was really obsessing over it all throughout the film. There was times when I was going, “Is this going to work?” But it did, he pulled it off.

Question: Why do you feel that these big, large-scope sci-fi stories are good for telling small, personal love stories?

Mike Cahill: You know sometimes when you watch those big sci-fi movies and you see the army generals and heroes, and I always wonder what everyone else is doing. You know, everybody else is doing something. And they eat, sleep, shower, use the toilet, and like there’s this other paradigm now. And I think also, in the intimate stories, you can touch upon something universal, like loss, or wanting somebody back. 

You can read our review of I Origins here.

I recently got a chance to be part of a round-table interview with Zach Braff. We talked about his new film Wish I Was Here, his cult classic Garden State, his plans for the future, and a secret having to do with Scrubs.

Question: You always have great music in your films; do you listen to music as you’re writing, do you wait and write the whole thing and then add music, what’s your process like?

Answer: I create a giant, epic playlist of just songs I love. I don’t listen to them while I write because it’s too distracting for me, but I create this epic playlist. When I hear a song, I go “oh, that feels cinematic, there’s just something about that”. Certain songs can be great but they don’t strike me necessarily as cinematic, and so I make this giant playlist of songs I think would be good in a movie. And those could be songs that came to me from a friend or I heard online or I shazamed it in a coffee joint, whatever, and then from there we’ll try stuff out in the film as we’re cutting. And it isn’t until you just find that perfect match, you get the hair on your arm raises up and you go “oh, that’s a possibility”. I don’t know the song is right until we’ve lined it up. Until then it’s just like anyone, finding songs that we thing could be possibilities.

Q: What’s the dynamic between you and your brother as far as writing the script is concerned?

A: The way we wrote is we got together and hammered out the overall spine of the story, and then we broke it down into an outline, and we spent that time together, because he lives in Honolulu and I was living in LA. So we would sort of write like “Okay, I’m gonna take a stab at this Aston-Martin scene, why don’t you take a stab at the scene with the young rabbi”. And we’d sort of like little by little switch it with each other and give each other notes, tweak and change, and little by little begin filling out the whole script until we had this giant thing and we started shaping it.

Q: You could talk a little bit about your experience with the crowdfunding and the KickStarter?

A: Yeah, you know, naively, I didn’t understand that the onus would fall upon me to explain the perils of independent film financing. You know, Rob Thomas had done it very successfully and everyone had cheered it on, and when I went out to do it, the first wave was, “that’ll never work”. Then when it worked in 48 hours, everyone had to rethink their think pieces. And so those who were detractors were making a lot of talking points that weren’t really true, and so that caught me off guard. I had to explain, again naively… You know when you know something, you guys are writers, you know that, if you have a hobby you know that very well… my life is trying to get money for movies, I spend my life trying to get projects financed, and so I know it really well and stupidly thought that everyone knows how this works, everyone knows how hard it is. So I then kinda had to go on up on a campaign, if you will, and explain all the different reasons why I had finally decided to try the crowdfunding. And it’s worked phenomenally well, I mean we had to take care of 47,000 people while we were making the movie, we shot it in 26 days. And if that isn’t hard enough, you have to make sure that every one of those 47,000 people felt taken care of. We had them visiting set, we had them being extras, we had them doing cameos, we created a whole online video blog of behind the scenes content. And that was my idea, I was like “Well people’s attention span on the web is like two and a half minutes, so let’s make like two and a half minute Project Greenlight behind the scenes videos of us making the movie.” I tried to do all the stuff to make it worth their while, and they seem pretty happy. The most fun of all is these Q&As, you know I showed the movie earlier, I’ve traveled the country, this is my second to last one and then I end in New York City. And show the movie early and do a Q&A with them and it’s awesome. It’s an experience a lot of people have never had before, you know the movie’s done and the guy who made the thing and stars in it sits with you and talks about it, and I hope that everyone who participated in it thought it was worth it.

Q: My question was going to be about your choice of Joey King [to play] your daughter. Did you develop a relationship as you were filming the movie?

A: Yeah, I just love that kid, she makes me want to have kids… [laughs]. You know, I met her on Oz [the Great and Powerful], we spent so much time together on Oz. Sam Raimi insisted that even though we were animated we were there every fucking day… And at first I was like “Oh God, I’m going to be stuck in this booth with this thirteen-year-old for six months…”, but she just turned out to be the coolest kid in the world. And she just was so cool, and so talented as you saw in the movie, if only I had that much talent at 13…

Q: Do you find it difficult to be both the actor in front of the camera and the director behind the camera?

A: It is tricky. You have to totally be bipolar in a sense and switch back and forth. Sometimes though it’s really helpful. I try to use it to my advantage, and that is, when you have a scene and it’s just two people, or not even two people, when it’s me and the kids or me and Kate [Hudson], I can sort of steer the scene from within. So if I’m doing a scene with you and you’re not being aggressive enough back with me I’ll just increase what a fucker I’m being with you. So if you’re a half-way decent actor you’ll naturally come back harder at me. And so in a lot of ways I think of it as being undercover in a scene. It was great with the kids too because the kids are so great at improving and being themselves, I would go on longer lenses and push the camera further away, so we’d just be sitting around that campfire, and I’d just talk to them. And the kids, little by little, just kinda forget that the cameras are there. And that’s stuff that a director can’t get as easily, because you have to call cut and come over and whisper in everyone’s ear. But I can just and roll the cameras and talk to Pierce [Gagnon], and get him to tell me stuff, like that campfire stuff is just him riffing. And that whole montage of them playing under the song and them all telling ghost stories was just us fucking around for half an hour and the cameras were way far back and shot the whole thing. And you just get these performances out of them that I wouldn’t have been able to get.

Q: Were you surprised by the success of Garden State when it came out?

A: Completely, it was my first movie. So when these think pieces come out that say “Why I liked Garden State then but not now”, I’m like, “Well thanks for liking it at all, it was my first movie”. I agree it’s flawed and at times it’s didactic and pretentious, but I never thought that many people would see it. So when it hit this cultural phenomena thing, I was shocked. Everyone told me I wouldn’t be able to even get those artists on the soundtrack, so when it went platinum and won the Grammy I was shocked, the whole thing was shocking.

Q: When did you realize it was a success?

A: I knew it did well financially, but then it won the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature, which is about as cool an award as you can get, for an indie-loving geek. Next to get getting an Oscar, getting First Feature at the Independent Spirit Awards is pretty rad. So that’s when I felt like, “Wow, this worked.”

Q: Do you see yourself doing an Ed Burns kind of thing where he does a Hollywood movie for two million dollars in order to pay for his own movie?

A: …Hollywood doesn’t hire me that much… [laughs] Ed Burns has had more luck with that… But TV, at this point TV is where all the great shit is happening, so I see myself going back to TV eventually, because there’s just not enough roles. I mean, no one’s making 5, 10, 20 million dollar movies anymore, everyone’s going big, it used to just be the summer tent poles, now they’re all just all-in, Marvel-esqu giant blow-em-ups. So I’ll do that probably.

Q: So my friend want to know: can you watch Scrubs on ABC? Like the episodes that you weren’t on?

A: I will admit to you something that I’ve never admitted to any writers before: I have never seen an episode of Scrubs post my exit in season 9. And not for any mean reason, I just couldn’t, it was too bizarre and weird. It’d be like going to a play, I’m in a Broadway show right now [Bullets Over Broadway], and going to the show once I’ve left and watching someone else do it, it would be too weird. So that whole rest of season 9 I’ve never seen. And that’s funny because no one has ever asked me that question before.

If that got you interested, you can read our review of Wish I Was Here.

After escaping from the accompanying photographer, William Eubank joins us for a round table interview and begins with a description of the various poses he was forced into for the camera. He is causal, bright and surprisingly enthusiastic (only second to me). We settle in and start with the questions.

Question: Did you always have an interest in sci-fi? Is it something that you do regardless of working at Panavision (where William had earlier worked with cameras as a technician)?

Answer: William Eubank: Yeah… I was really into Twilight Zone, Ray Bradbury, Stephen King and [similar] stuff growing up. I don’t know if I was specifically into sci-fi. I guess, I like crazy ideas and often those crazy ideas can take place on the stage of science fiction. The universe is a very big place and whatever we do, from story perspective, it just seems like there so much possibility. Umm... when you get to science fiction the stage becomes so gigantic, that it’s really fun to contrast that against a simple story. [Takes a pause] I guess I never really thought about it. Both my films (Love & The Signal) at this point are science fiction, so I guess I’m science fiction so far.

Q: So, what was the inspiration behind The Signal?

A: When you go for a movie that is about Area 51 or something similar, and you already have put the story into a box. I wanted to dabble into a movie that had something to do with unknown government stuff and things that really don’t tell you where we were gonna go with the movie, so that when you find out about those things later, or are being offered little bits of information, you go…. “Whoa!! That’s interesting” and “Is this movie about THAT!” I like making movies where you define them later in the game than earlier in the game. So, I had the end game in mind, where I wanted the movie to go and the characters I wanted. And at that point it was only about allowing the characters to do what they were gonna do. So, I wanted to do a film that offered what it was, during the film as opposed to before the film… I’m not even sure if it makes any sense!

Q: Yes, it does ... And you had the freedom to really make the end result that you wanted?

A: Yeah.

Q: Did you have to scale back on any of your effects or ambitions?

A: No … Like I said, you always have this box where you have the days you can shoot and the budget. There is definitely a period where as a filmmaker you have to come to terms with that and quickly make choices. I always feel like that when you are a writer-director, before you start directing, there’s this whole phase of storyboarding.

*After a short distraction over strange voices from nearby room…*

So, I have this book that I work with and I basically break the entire script down, shot by shot and write and draw in it. So by the time I’m shooting and I don’t know what I’m doing, I just look into the book and “Oh! There it is. This is what I’m supposed to do!”

Q: Would it be incorrect to assume that there is a sort of graphic novel like feel to it, kind of like an anime?

A: Yeah, I’m a huge anime fan! A lot of people say it [The Signal] is Akira, but it’s not Akira by any means … [Jokes…] though it’s definitely like “there’s a guy in hospital gown and he is screaming a lot.

*We pass a few chuckles too*

It’s funny. I like to shoot in ways that pay homage to …. Like the way Scotts [Scott Pilgrim comics] have always used lines and color and there’s this really cool tight gritty stuff. But when it comes to action, you don’t really have money to shoot and try to figure out how to make it impactful, so I try to make it graphic novel-esque. With anime, from an editing perspective, they are really lean and yet so intense. So they use these editing techniques, like pacing and ins-and-outs to almost intensify action without that many shots. So I like to study that a lot, because at an indie level when you are trying to go big, I think the answer to that is in anime.

Q: I noticed you had this beautiful kind of flashbacks that could be from different film entirely in contrast to the starkness of bleak facility. So where did you get the visual style of the film?

A: Yeah. The film has a three course of actions. You have the opening which I wanted to feel very organic and real. I want to say that I tend to shoot whatever is best for the feeling, photography wise.  Strange reference: but Nick has always said that “whatever you do, always shoot the best shot you can for the moment”, which I have always taken to the heart. The second part of the film: I wanted it to feel contained and emotionally truncated. And then the third part to be like a breakout and something where you run free.     

Q: You had a good experience as a cinematographer, so while filming “The Signal”, did you ever feel the urge to get behind the camera?

A: Well, I’m always kind of picky about certain types of lenses and few shots and I’m always learning. I might switch it up a bit next time. But the answer to that is, I got cinematographer David Lanzenberg and he is the sweetest guy in the world, he is a dude, and everything was so collaborative. Some cinematographers, when you meet with them and they know you come from a cinematography background, they say “Look if I’m going to work with you, you need to give me my space!” and I would say “Ok, I’m not gonna hire you!” [Laughs …] but David was “Hey man, I’ve seen your work and your work is beautiful, I can’t wait to work with you … let’s keep an open dialogue”. David is one of the people eager to say “Hey, we are like a two headed monster, visually, so let’s put that to work and be more of a titan”. So it was really cool and David is a really good cinematographer. And sometimes I have suggestions, but David was open to them.

*Then we get the final warning, “Last question guys”*

Q: Do you know what your next project is going to be?

A: I’m working on a bunch of stuff. I have three things in the works right now, not sure which one will end up being next. And I’m writing a project with my brother, Carlyle Eubank, and David Frigerio, the other writer from this film and one other project with British writer…

Q: So, we are seeing the rise of the “Eubank Brothers”…

A: [Laughs] Hopefully! Hopefully!

Check out Kunal Asarsa's review of The Signal here.

Wednesday

We have not covered Beneath the Harvest Sky yet but will do so upon its Boston release 5/8. Marissa Marchese will review the film.


Thursday

Brandon Isaacson on Trap Street ***NUFEC Award Winner

Brandon Isaacson on Skeleton Twins

Brandon Isaacson on In Country

Brandon Isaacson on Wicker Kittens ***NUFEC Award Winner

Brandon Isaacson on Tough Love

Brandon Isaacson on Audience Award Winning Narrative Feature, Homemakers


Friday

Brandon Isaacson on Boyhood

Brandon Isaacson on Project Wild Thing

Carter Sigl on Project Wild Thing

Brandon Isaacson on Fat


Saturday

Brandon Isaacson on One Cut, One Life ***NUFEC Award Winner

Brandon Isaacson on Obvious Child ***NUFEC Award Winner

Brandon Isaacson on Calvary

Brandon Isaacson on Tough Love

Brandon Isaacson on A for Alex

Brandon Isaacson on Starfish Throwers



Sunday

Emily Fisler on I Believe in Unicorns ***NUFEC Award Winner

Brandon Isaacson on I Believe in Unicorns ***NUFEC Award Winner

Brandon Isaacson speaks with Leah Meyerhoff, writer-director of I Believe in Unicorns ***NUFEC Award Winner

Brandon Isaacson on 9-Man ***NUFEC Award Winner

Brandon Isaacson on Vessel ***NUFEC Award Winner

Brandon Isaacson on Freeload ***NUFEC Award Winner

Brandon Isaacson speaks with the director of Freeload ***NUFEC Award Winner

Carter Sigl speaks with the writer-directors of Fort Tilden

Carter Sigl on Fort Tilden

Brandon Isaacson on Fort Tilden

Brandon Isaacson on Starred Up

Brandon Isaacson on Web

Brandon Isaacson on Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter

Brandon Isaacson on Dear White People

Brandon Isaacson on Riot on the Dance Floor


Monday

Brandon Isaacson on Wicker Kittens ***NUFEC Award Winner

Brandon Isaacson on Dear White People

Brandon Isaacson on The Sacrament


Tuesday

Brandon Isaacson on The Double

Brandon Isaacson on The Trip to Italy


Wednesday

Brandon Isaacson on Mood Indigo


NUFEC Awards