”It’s not a movie about pornography but how our individual sensibilities get formed.”
– Brian Grazer
I was very excited to talk to Brian Grazer. Not only has he worked on some of my favorite films such as Night Shift, Armed and Dangerous and Bowfinger, it’s just so rare to get to talk to a person that only produces. I get to talk to actors, writers and directors everyday but a powerful producer on par with Joel Silver and Jerry Bruckheimer, almost never.
It’s to be expected that Grazer would come out to promote the documentary Inside Deep Throat because its been a passion project of his for many years. In fact at one point he had the rights to do a biopic on Linda Lovelace, but that didnt work out.
Indie film darling Greta Gerwig already has two movies out this year, one of them being Damsels in Distress, in which she starred. I actually got to meet her for that film when I was interviewing Whit Stillman. While they were paired, Sillman commented on her character in the Arthur remake, as an example of how studio movies give characters silly traits.
In Lola Versus Gerwig stars as Lola, a woman whose fiancé (Joel Kinnaman) cancels their wedding sending her on a spiral of casual sex, dating, drinking and disaster. This is not one of your Kate Hudson wedding movies.
The impressive credentials of Greta Gerwig include a magna cum laude honor from Barnard College. As an actor, she starred in notable indies like Hannah Takes the Stairs and The Duplass Brothers’ Baghead. Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg got her enough notice to land big Hollywood movies like No Strings Attached and Arthur.
Curled up in a hotel chair, Gerwig remembered me, since we’d only met two months prior. We sort of continued the conversation where Damsels in Distress left off. Durning our conversation, Gerwig got us thinking about how awesome it is to be bored, which was a most exciting and unexpected twist.
You would think that when someone has enough money (or a stinkin pile of cash) to make Joe Perry’s Rock Your World Boneyard Brew Hot Sauce they might not be able to pull off a solo album, but all that money has been put to good use. I got sent a promo copy of Joe Perrys latest self titled solo album and boy was I surprised when I popped it in and heard the Aerosmith guitarist’s voice. An even bigger surprise was when I realized that the vocals were just as good as the guitar riffs.
Sometimes when a one of the main creative forces behind a very successful rock band, like an Aerosmith, does a solo album they try their best to make it sound like garage rock. Usually they think that pushing the slider marked ”Make it sound like it was recorded in a room with a tin roof” will do it for them. But Perry has pulled it off and created a gritty, balls out rock and roll album that is obviously very intimate.
“I like finding the areas where fiction and non-fiction overlap”
– Pola Rapaport
Pola Rapaport is the filmmaker behind the unique documentary Writer of O. Through interviews and dramatizations this documentary tells the story of Dominique Aury the woman who wrote the controversial and sexually provocative Story of O. Written in France in the mid-50s, Story of O is about a beautiful Parisian fashion photographer who is in love with a man named Rene. As part of that intense love, she demands debasement and severe sexual and psychological tests.
“It’s like that expression: ‘Smile until the rest of you catches on.'”
– Jennifer Axen, The Stripper’s Guide to Looking Great Naked
Authors and researchers Jennifer Axen and Leigh Phillips uncovered an untapped gold mine of real-world beauty technique from strippers and erotic dancers. The pair traveled the country interviewing women who make their livings in the nude in order to find out their secrets for looking great naked. The result? The Stripper’s Guide to Looking Great Naked, a fun, informative, and easy-to-use manual for real women who want to look as sexy as strippers do when they take off their clothes.
“Whenever you are engaged in a long piece of writing the fun of it is to create a whole consistent world that somebody could sink into. I think if you do it with enough confidence people could just pop into your world and just splash around.”
– Audrey Niffenegger
The Time Traveler’s Wife is one of the more interesting fiction novels to come out in recent years. It’s about Henry DeTamble, an adventurous librarian who travels involuntarily through time, and Clare Abshire, an artist whose life takes a natural sequential course. Henry and Clare’s passionate love affair endures across a sea of time and captures the two lovers in an impossibly romantic trap.
“My goal when I came to this film was to stay as far away from Friedkin and Friedkin’s Exorcist as possible.”
– Paul Schrader
Even though Paul Schrader came up in the ’70s with filmmakers such as Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Francis Ford Coppola, due to his not being allowed to see a film until he was well into his teens, he is not considered one of their generation of movie brats. That outsider status has allowed him to create his own niche in directing with such films as Light Sleeper, Affliction and American Gigolo.
Over the years Schrader has flirted with the mainstream mostly with screenplays such as Raging Bull and The Mosquito Coast. After the critical success of Auto Focus, Schrader decided to again work within the studio system and direct Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist. It’s a wild film that tackles many of Schrader’s prominent themes such as religion, violence and death.
