Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with some more superstar coverage from the Santa Barbara Film Festival. Tonight is the Virtuosos award, which pretty much is a series of short chats with character actors, most of whom are nominated for one thing or another. This year there's a solid lineup which includes Whiplash's JK Simmons, Get On Up's Chadwick Boseman, Boyhood's Ellar Coltrane, Gone Girl's Rosamund Pike, Fury's Logan Lerman, Selma's David Oyelowo and Obvious Child's Jenny Slate.
These chats are pretty limited since there are so many to honor, but I'll do my best to report on whatever information, anecdotes and insights pique my interest as the night goes on. Check below for a bullet points style rundown of the big event! Enjoy!
CHADWICK BOSEMAN
-Get On Up started filming 2 months after Boseman got the part. Said his first big test was seeing if he could nail James Brown's dance moves. If he couldn't do that then he was gonna be a no-go. He said he didn't start out very well, but there was enough there for him to keep the job.
-Learning to dance like James Brown was a crazy workout. Boseman said they even joked around with doing a James Brown workout tape.
-When he got 42 and Black Panther Boseman got a lot of calls congratulating him. Not for Get On Up because nobody who knew him thought he could pull it off. His sister's reaction? “Boy, you can't dance!”
-”There are movies, TV shows and plays that are jobs. This was not a job.”
-First time meeting Viola Davis: “She was sizing me up.” He thinks she was trying to create a distance since . Even when they were in hair and makeup she wouldn't speak with him.
-Host says he's played real life guys and now he's transitioning into something not real with Marvel's Black Panther. ”Man, you try to tell these Marvel fans that this isn't real!” Followed up saying that he's going to give this all he has, just like everything he does.
ELLAR COLTRANE
-During the abusive stepfather stuff Coltrane never felt the heaviness because Patricia Arquette always made sure to joke around between takes.
-Any thought to quit halfway through? “Not for a second.” Said he felt a responsibility, even as a kid, and was proud of what he was doing, so it never entered his mind to rebel and drop the project.
-Coltrane would see Linklater a few times every year between shooting, but Arquette and Ethan Hawke only ever was in touch when they came back to shoot.
-Mason was always Coltrane through and through, but as he got older he had more life experience to draw from and formed his character more than the kind of blank slate he was as a child.
LOGAN LERMAN
-How did you get this part? He really wanted to say a funny answer, but “I realize I don't know everybody in this room” so he probably shouldn't. The serious answer is he fought hard for it.
-Had a lot of time before filming to meet veterans and prepare, so the weight of the role wasn't as excruciating as it could have been.
-Lerman said he brought a lot of his character, Norman, to the rehearsals and was intentionally non-conformist and annoying, which resulted in some tussles on the floor that had him and some non-named cast members trying to choke each other out.
-He said the entire cast wanted to stay immersed so there wasn't a lot of going to the trailers or fucking around on cell phones. Also the fact that they were shooting in England in the Fall and only had 10 hours or so of light, so they always stayed in the tank, even during lunch.
-He said horrible shit to Pitt in order to make him slap him harder during the scene where he's forced to shoot the German soldier. “We got to know each other really well and found out about our insecurities and I used that against Brad in that scene so I could piss him off and make him hit me harder.”
DAVID OYELOWO
-What did you have for dinner tonight? “A maui-maui wrap.”
-Brad Pitt, producer, sang his name at the Palm Springs Film Festival. ”I've endured a 16 year career of people butchering my name, but there's no excuse now. The biggest movie star of the world has sung my name!”
-First read the script in 2007 and back then it was more about LBJ than MLK.
-“The original director didn't want me. He shall remain nameless, Stephen Frears. I'm here now and can say whatever I want!”
-The producers kept Oyelowo onboard and were looking for another director after Frears left. Oyelowo had worked with Ava Duvernay before and suggested her and she got the gig. ”I went from being rejected to helping hire the director.”
-He said it was incredibly liberating that they couldn't use any of Dr. King's actual speeches. “I can't imagine anything worse for an actor than having to deliver the I Have A Dream speech.” He compared it to the To Be Or Not To Be speech in Hamlet. It's the part of the play where the actor can see the audience mouthing along.
-The moderator: “You're a slim guy. How did you get fuller in the face for the role?” Oyelowo: “Macaroni and cheese.” He said the secret was to wait until 11:30 at night and eat. Then when you wake up your face is fuller!
-On the Oscar snub for director and performance. ”Historically, and this is truly my feeling... Generally speaking, we, as black people, have been celebrated more for when we are subservient, when we are not being leaders or kings or at the center of our narrative, driving it forward. To me, Denzel Washington should have won for Malcolm X. We've just got to come to the point whereby there isn't a notion of who black people are that feeds into what we are celebrated as. Not just in the Academy, but in life as well. We have been slaves, we have been servants, but we've also been kings and have changed the world.”
-Credits 12 Years A Slave and The Butler's financial success for getting Selma greenlighted. They both made $200m each worldwide.
ROSAMUND PIKE
-On not being able to talk about the twists and turns of her performance in advance: ”At the New York premiere I realized I've basically been playing Amy the last 6 months. I've been lying and hiding the truth.”
-Amy had the perfect storm because of her parents' book series. She said it was like Amy had a twin sister who was better at everything.“She's a narcissist and feels inadequate at the same time.”
-”Yes, it's a film about a murderess, but it's very empowering in some ways.”
-Neil Patrick Harris death scene... “I felt like if I'm going to do a scene like that it needs to come from a real place.” She didn't know how a throat cutting works, how hard the stroke had to be, so she went to a butcher in LA and asked to spend 5 minutes hacking away at a pig's carcass.
-On having a baby right after shooting the movie: ”I think I finished playing Amy and thought, 'I now have to bring an innocent human being into the world.'”
JK SIMMONS
-On reading the script for Whiplash: “It is one of the most compelling things I've read in my entire life.”
-Had a football coach or two that was close to his character in Whiplash. “But I'm not playing football now, am I?” He's more a fan of the coddle approach.
-Do people find his character the hero? Simmons said an Eastern European symphony conductor emailed him after and said it was so refreshing to see a good teacher like that showcased.
-When he was filming Oz Simmons' wife was doing Beauty and the Beast on Broadway, singing and dancing. “That was an odd time in our house.”
-How was it slapping Miles around? ”Have you met Miles Teller? These smug little pretty boy movie stars... The Miles Tellers, the Logan Lermans, they need to be slapped around a little.”
-Any tough scenes on Whiplash? “You know what? The tough scenes to do are the badly-written scenes and there were none in this film.”
-Thought being asked to host SNL was the coolest thing ever, but completely terrifying. Said he hasn't slept since Saturday because of SNL and that he worked a 19 hour day on Friday. “Who needs sleep? I'm young!”
JENNY SLATE
-Her character in Obvious Child was introduced in a short film 5 years ago. Slate didn't think she would revisit her. It was her first acting experience.
-”The funny woman with the face that isn't the normal button-nosed type is always the friend. The director said, 'Why don't these characters ever look and act like my friends?'”
-The content of the script, about a consequence-free abortion, wasn't the toughest part of the film. The fact it was shot in 18 days for almost no money was the real challenge, but Slate said it brought out the best in the cast and crew.
-The warm butter/restaurant date scene was one of the toughest to film because a lot of non-professional extras (most of whom were elderly) were brought in and they didn't understand they couldn't talk and would ruin so many takes.
-”I've always had a blue sense of humor, but it comes with a sense of joy, like when a baby shows you its butt like 'Look at me! I have a butt!'”
-An elderly Academy voter bumped into her in the bathroom after an Obvious Child screening. Academy Member: ”I thought the jokes were disgusting, but I thought it was a very touching film. What did you think?” Slate: “Um, I liked it.” Academy Member: “I thought the actress was good.” Slate: “Me, too.”
-Christopher Lloyd came out to give the awards to each of the winners. Said the ideal when he became an actor was to become part of an acting company which would stick together for 8 months and put on 4 or 5 plays and it struck him back stage that the group on stage today would make one of the most amazing traveling companies ever. He then presented the actors their awards.
One of my favorite moments of the night was when JK Simmons accepted his award, so I'll close with that. He was praising Damien Chazelle's directing. He said he hopes that we'll be enjoying films from him for years to come, even past when Simmons himself has long retired to a private island. “I didn't know I was going to say that until it was out of my mouth. By the way, it's the commercials that pay for that island, not movies. Commercials, though...” and he made the universal moolah sign by rubbing his fingers together. It tickled me, so I hope it tickles you, too.
I hope you guys enjoyed following along with tonight's adventures. I had a blast in the audience. All these people were on fire and made it real hard not to want to be BFFs with them all. Especially JK Simmons. Thanks again to Kraken for taking the above pics so I could focus on furiously taking notes!
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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