“For me at least, with comedy, it’s mostly about friction.”
– Todd Strauss-Schulson
Todd Strauss-Schulson is a filmmaker whose journey to directing features is inextricably tied up in his journey into manhood; it all began when his grandpa bought him a video camera for his Bar Mitzvah. From those humble beginnings, Strauss-Schulson has gone on to nab Panavision’s New Filmmaker’s Prize, has traveled to Asia for an extended gig directing MTV’s Whatever Things, a reality show billed as “a more stylish version of Jackass with an all western cast.” His comedy shorts have played South By Southwest Film Festival and the Just For Laughs Comedy Festival in Montreal. Most recently, he directed his first feature, A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas, in which everyone’s favorite stoners are getting older and facing the responsibilities of career and fatherhood.
After a quick discussion about whether or not guys who are half-Jewish need to only be half-circumcised, SG caught up with Todd Strauss-Schulson in a bar in downtown Boston, down the street from his alma mater, Emerson College.
“I wanted to keep this movie grounded in reality.”
– Diablo Cody
Screenwriter Diablo Cody’s greatest achievement with her latest project, Young Adult, is to bring her audience to a point where they sympathize and empathize with the film’s in many ways distinctly unlikable central character. Mavis Gary (played by Charlize Theron) is the seemingly successful author of a series of young adult novels, who on the page has everything going for her. Yet, despite being blessed in both the looks and career department, happiness eludes her.
When an invitation arrives in her inbox to the christening of the daughter of her high school sweetheart, Buddy (Patrick Wilson), Mavis decides to return to her hometown to reclaim her former glory – and her former boyfriend. Blinded by her own narcissism, Mavis chooses to ignore the fact that Buddy is now happily married as she obsessively engages in the shameless pursuit of her unavailable ex.
A chance meeting with a former classmate she barely remembers, Matt Freehauf (Patton Oswalt), provides Mavis with a drinking buddy, and a voice of reason. However, despite forming an unlikely bond with Matt, who in the wake of a high school beating is left as physically challenged as she is mentally, Mavis is unwilling and unable to retreat from the comfort of her self-delusions to see her world as it really is.
As with Cody’s Academy Award-winning screenplay for Juno, Young Adult combines subtle storytelling with unconventional choices. An exercise in nuance and tone, which sees Cody reunited with her Juno cohort, director Jason Reitman (Up In The Air), the film features award-worthy performances from both Theron and Oswalt that – as with the script – are remarkable for their realness.
SuicideGirls sat down with Cody in New York to talk about the film.
“It just goes to show you that someone with some real talent is not just a one note kind of guy. Anyone that versatile is always going to succeed.”
– Matt Fleckenstein
When I first called in to talk to Matt Fleckenstein, someone answered the phone Drake & Josh. I got very excited because for some reason even though I’m 30 years old I am obsessed with that show. I think that both Drake Bell and Josh are enormously talented plus it’s created by Dan Schneider, the heavy set dude from Head of the Class!
When I got Matt Fleckenstein on the phone I quizzed him about working on Drake & Josh and Dan Schneider. But then we settled into what he hopes will be a regular gig, working on Family Guy. Currently Fleckenstein only has a few writing credits to his name when it comes to the Family Guy TV series but hopefully that will change. Right now he has the prime gig of writing the upcoming Family Guy comic book.
“This movie has heart which is important for a comedy because ultimately you have to laugh and walk out of this movie feeling good about yourself.”
– Aaron Eckhart
Aaron Eckhart scared a generation of filmgoers with his misogynistic character in the seminal independent film In the Company of Men. Since then hes played such roles as the sympathetic biker in Erin Brockovich to a fast talking shyster in Paycheck. Now he’s playing the be all end all of shysters; a tobacco lobbyist in Thank You For Smoking.
Nick Naylor is the chief spokesman for Big Tobacco. Confronted by health zealots out to ban tobacco and an opportunistic senator who wants to put poison labels on cigarette packs, Nick goes on a PR offensive, spinning away the dangers of cigarettes on TV talk shows and enlisting a Hollywood super-agent to promote smoking in movies.
“This is one of Jim Henson’s earlier works”
– Ramon Perez
Ramon Perez may not be familiar to many comics fans, but his collaborators on his new graphic novel are quite well-known. Perez is writing and drawing Tale of Sand, a graphic novel just released by Archaia Press which is based on an unfilmed screenplay by Jim Henson and Jerry Juhl.
An experimental project that Henson began working on in the late sixties, Perez has transformed the script into a beautifully illustrated graphic novel. The book defies easy summary, something we discussed in the interview, because it’s a story that’s much open to interpretation. It’s strikingly different from the work that most Henson fans know and should hopefully help to start a new conversation about the kind of talent that Henson was.
The book also marks the arrival of Perez as a top tier comics talent. An artist of uncommon skills as a designer and illustrator, he also possesses an adept sense of color and layout. It says a lot about the Henson Company that they let an artist have such free reign in adapting the script, and Perez rose to the task, crafting one of the best comics of the year.
“I hate anything to do with nostalgia and retro.” – Gary Numan
Gary Numan is best known to American audiences as the creator of the classic song “Cars” back in the 1980s. But Numan has never stopped making his unique brand of electronic music. Powerful, deep, hot and cold at the same time, Numan revolutionizes music with every new album. His latest is Jagged which is produced by one of the best hard techno producers out there, Ade Fenton.
“They’re pushing their bodies beyond endurance to extreme ends for the entertainment of others.”
– Christa Faust
Christa Faust’s new novel Choke Hold is a sexy and violent thriller, and though it’s a sequel to her earlier novel Money Shot, it’s a very different book.
Faust has spent her career writing a series of decidedly different novels, from the Porn Valley set noir of Money Shot to the Lucha Libre detective tale Hoodtown to an investigation into New York’s S&M subculture in Control Freak to a strange erotic tale of the Peking Opera, Hollywood and homophobia in Triads (which she co-wrote with her friend Poppy Z. Brite). In between these heavily researched projects she writes tie-in books for Supernatural and other television shows and novelizations of films like Friday the Thirteenth and Snakes on a Plane. Faust, who has worked as a professional dominatrix, is also known as the writer-director of the bondage serial adventure Dita in Distress. She recently announced her next project, Butch Fatale: Dyke Dick in Double-D Double Cross, which will be released as an ebook in February (a NSFW excerpt is previewed on her website).
A longtime resident of Los Angeles, she spoke with SG on the phone.
