Latest Movie News From Moviefone |
- The 'Game of Thrones' Iron Throne Has a New Occupant ... Sort of
- Watch 'Assassin's Creed' Stars Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard Explain the Animus
- Watch the New 'Sherlock' Season 4 Teaser: 'It's Not A Game Anymore'
- Leah Remini and Scientology Score Big Ratings for A&E
- Best Holiday Movies, Star Wars Hot Takes: CAN'T WAIT! Podcast Ep. 6
- CBS Sets Midseason Premiere Dates For 'Training Day,' 'Survivor'
- Dolores Walks By Her Own Grave in New 'Westworld' Finale Photos
- New 'Nashville' Showrunners Confirm Juliette Survives For 'Surprising' New Direction
- 'Masters of Sex' Canceled by Showtime After 4 Seasons
- Sophie Turner: Sansa's on a 'Power Trip' in 'Game of Thrones' Season 7
- 'Walking Dead' Star Slays Trolls for Mocking Her Post-Baby Weight
- Emma Watson Had 'Harry Potter' Cast Predict Where They'd Be in 10 Years
- Netflix Will Now Let You Download Titles to Watch Offline
- Watch Natalie Portman & J.J. Abrams Use the Force to Win 'Password'
- Writer-Director Nicholas Meyer Looks Back on 'Time After Time' and Forward to 'Star Trek: Discovery'
| The 'Game of Thrones' Iron Throne Has a New Occupant ... Sort of Posted:  Move aside, Cersei Lannister.The Iron Throne has been occupied by many a character over six seasons of the HBO hit drama "Game of Thrones," and a member of House Tyrell has just claimed it. Well, kind of. Finn Jones, the actor who portrayed the ill-fated Ser Loras Tyrell, recently took his turn atop the iconic chair at the Chicago "Game of Thrones" Behind the Scenes event. The official "Game of Thrones" Twitter account tweeted a picture of Loras's short yet glorious stint in the much-coveted seat. The event took place in Chicago on Nov. 26 and 27 and gave die-hard fans the chance to try out "battle training" at Castle Black with virtual reality technology, revisit key Season 6 moments, view props and costumes, and learn more about visual effects. Oh, the FOMO. We'll see the battle for the Iron Throne resume when Season 7 premieres next summer. TV gods, grant us patience. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Watch 'Assassin's Creed' Stars Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard Explain the Animus Posted:  If you have no idea what the Animus is, "Assassin's Creed" stars Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard have got you covered.In a new featurette released Wednesday by 20th Century Fox, the actors explain the plot of their video-game-inspired film to the uninitiated, including answering the question of what exactly the Animus is. Put simply, it is "a machine that allows somebody to revisit the lives of their ancestors," according to Fassbender. Cotillard builds on that description, explaining that the Animus allows subjects to "take the place of one of their ancestors" in the past. Basically, it's what she calls "genetic time travel." The featurette shows just how powerful the technology is. We get to see Fassbender's character, Callum Lynch, enter the Animus, and it brings him back to Spanish inquisition. There, he takes over for his ancestor, an Assassin, and becomes a pawn in a centuries-old conflict between the Assassins and the Templar Order. "It's just a fantastic concept," says Fassbender. It definitely sounds and looks like it. Check out the featurette below to see for yourself. "Assassin's Creed" hits theaters on Dec. 21. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Watch the New 'Sherlock' Season 4 Teaser: 'It's Not A Game Anymore' Posted:  A new case will be open soon, and "it's not a game anymore."That cryptic message is the main takeaway from and the title of a new "Sherlock" Season 4 teaser trailer. The BBC dropped the short preview Wednesday in preparation for the show's January return. Before you get your hopes up too high, though, know that the teaser keeps a tight lid on any plot points to come. As always, any hints are ridiculously hard to figure out. At least we get a look at our favorite crime-solving duo. The teaser shows Sherlock Holmes (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Dr. John Watson (Martin Freeman) taking a moment to sit down together. Whether they're resting or working is anyone's guess, but it's still nice to get a peak. The teaser doesn't offer much, but it will have to tide us over until the next time the BBC decides to drop us some breadcrumbs. "Sherlock" Season 4 premieres Jan. 1 on PBS Masterpiece with the episode "The Six Thatchers." This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Leah Remini and Scientology Score Big Ratings for A&E Posted:  Controversial though it may be, never let it be said that Scientology has zero appeal.A&E saw big ratings with its new docuseries "Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath." In fact, the show earned the network its highest-rated series launch since "Big Smo" in June 2014, according to Deadline. Tuesday's premiere episode brought in 2.1 million viewers, including 1.1 million in the 25 to 54 demographic. Clearly, there's interest in the religion -- even when it's just morbid fascination. The eight-episode docuseries follows actress and ex-Scientologist Leah Remini as she investigates the experience of leaving the church. Not only does she have her own departure to draw on, she looks at what others have gone through, from regular members to former high-ranking officials. The stories they share aren't very pretty, but as the ratings indicate, they're compelling. Remini serves as executive producer of the series through No Seriously Productions, working alongside Intellectual Property Corporation's Eli Holzman and Aaron Saidman. Alex Weresow also executive produces, plus serves as showrunner. We'll see if interest in "Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath" holds when the show continues on Tuesdays at 10/9c. [via: Deadline] This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Best Holiday Movies, Star Wars Hot Takes: CAN'T WAIT! Podcast Ep. 6 Posted:
After an awkward segue, the conversation turns to holiday movies. Yay! We discuss our all-time favorite holiday flicks -- some traditional and some not-so-traditional -- with a few controversial picks in the mix. In the end, Tim reveals his Hallmark movie-loving inner 80-year-old, Rachel re-commits to "Grinch"-mas, Phil makes a startling Peanuts-related confession, and Tony just wants everyone to have a "White Christmas." At the end of the podcast, Tim, Phil, Rachel, and Tony play Secret Santa, with each picking a name out of a hat. The Secret Santas then will gift (more like assign) a holiday movie to the giftee, who will watch it in preparation for the next episode. Be sure to tune in next time, when those picks -- and more hot takes -- will be revealed. CAN'T WAIT! A Movie Lover's Podcast Episode 6 Here's the rundown:
Total runtime: 38:11 Subscribe to the CAN'T WAIT! podcast: Have thoughts/feelings/feedback about the podcast? Hit us up on Facebook and Twitter. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| CBS Sets Midseason Premiere Dates For 'Training Day,' 'Survivor' Posted:
"Training Day" is set 15 years after the film, and stars Bill Paxton as the veteran police officer in the mold of Denzel Washington's character. Newcomer Justin Cornwell takes on the rookie role played by Ethan Hawke. CBS is also attempting to revive Saturday night programming with "Ransom," a drama about a hostage negotiator. The other high-profile drama debuting in midseason is the legal drama "Doubt," starring Katherine Heigl. Here are the midseason premiere dates: Wednesday, Dec. 21 Sunday, Jan. 1 Saturday, Jan. 7 Sunday, Jan. 22 Wednesday, Jan. 25 Wednesday, Feb. 1 Thursday, Effective Feb. 2 Wednesday, Effective Feb. 15 Wednesday, March 8 Friday, April 21 Want more stuff like this? Like us on Facebook. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Dolores Walks By Her Own Grave in New 'Westworld' Finale Photos Posted:
The first season of the sci-fi Western drama concludes on Sunday night, and there are so, so many questions left to be answered. The official synopsis of "The Bicameral Mind" doesn't reveal much: "Ford (Anthony Hopkins) unveils his bold new narrative; Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) embraces her identity; Maeve (Thandie Newton) sets her plan in motion." HBO released four images from the 90-minute finale to tease fans on what's to come. The first is the one above, of Dolores looking angry, fierce, and determined, standing near a train at a railroad station. Whether it's the one in Sweetwater is unclear. The next one shows Dolores and the Man in Black (Ed Harris) walking through the cemetery, presumably outside the church at Escalanate, right past her grave, which reads "Dolores Abernathy." Want more stuff like this? Like us on Facebook. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| New 'Nashville' Showrunners Confirm Juliette Survives For 'Surprising' New Direction Posted:
The country music drama's new showrunners, "thirtysomething" creators Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick, revealed in an Entertainment Weekly interview that the songstress (played by Hayden Panettiere) survives the plane crash teased in a cliffhanger at the end of Season 4. When Season 5 premieres in January, after the show's move from ABC to CMT, Herskovitz said, "We can tell you she's alive." The real question is, how will Juliette react to her near-death experience and how will it affect her relationships, particularly with her ex-husband Avery (Jonathan Jackson). "I think the direction we take will be surprising," Zwick teased. Herskovitz added, "She finds her life very different now from what it ever was before. That cliffhanger affects other people in the story -- when something like that happens, it's a big event for everybody. There are ripples that go out from this event that affect other people in the show. It's a pretty great story." The duo also explained they plan to focus again on music industry storylines, as well as on the relationship between Rayna (Connie Britton) and Deacon (Charles Esten). "The idea of what it means to be married has always been interesting to us -- what are the dynamics, their individual triggers, how do they resolve conflict?" Herskovitz said. "It's endlessly fascinating to talk about two adults trying to be in a relationship to each other, so that's been really fun for us and for the actors to go deeper in that way. It's been rejuvenating." "Nashville" Season 5 premieres Thursday, Jan. 5 at 9 p.m. on CMT. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| 'Masters of Sex' Canceled by Showtime After 4 Seasons Posted:
Deadline reports that the network declined to order a fifth season of the drama about pioneering sex researchers Dr. William Masters (Michael Sheen) and Virginia Johnson (Lizzy Caplan). "Masters of Sex" was developed by Michelle Ashford and based on Thomas Maier's biography of the same title. Season 4 began in 1968 and followed the couple during the "swinging '70s" as they explored other relationships, both personal and professional. The season finale, however, brought Masters and Johnson back together as they got married. As a "prestige drama," the show received modest ratings (an average of 800,000 viewers per episode), but more critical acclaim and awards nominations. Though "Masters of Sex" was never nominated in the Best Drama category at the Emmys, Allison Janney did win an Emmy for best guest actress. Want more stuff like this? Like us on Facebook. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Sophie Turner: Sansa's on a 'Power Trip' in 'Game of Thrones' Season 7 Posted:
"Game of Thrones" Season 7 is now filming, and HBO just shared three brief shots from the new season, including one of Sansa. Actress Sophie Turner talked to Entertainment Weekly about her character's future, and it sounds slightly worrisome. Sansa finally took down Ramsay Bolton in Season 6, but apparently her newfound power is going to her head:
Power trip? Insecure? Ugh. Not what we wanted to hear. By the way, what power? Jon was declared King in the North at the end of Season 6, even though he doesn't even seem to want any power. Does he give Sansa control of Winterfell? Does she fight Jon for a larger slice of the Northern pie? Can we officially start calling her Queen in the North, or just stick with Beyoncé in the North? Turner said what excites her about Season 7 is that "main characters are coming together and it feels like things are ramping up. It's really exciting and all feels like it's coming to a big conclusion." Sadly, that big conclusion will be here before we know it. Seasons are traditionally 10 episodes, but Season 7 will only have seven, and the final Season 8 is expected to have even fewer. But it is exciting to think of the characters all coming together in Westeros and building to some kind of massive end game. Let's just hope Sansa's power trip doesn't get in her own way before the series finale. Want more stuff like this? Like us on Facebook. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| 'Walking Dead' Star Slays Trolls for Mocking Her Post-Baby Weight Posted:
Masterson's character, Tara Chambler, just returned to the series in Season 7, Episode 6, "Swear." Tara and Heath left for a two-week supply run back in Season 6, but in real life Masterson was pregnant and needed time off for the November 2015 birth of her daughter. Sadly, Tara's big return came with unwanted commentary on Masterson's post-baby body. She decided to fire back against everyone commenting on her weight in an epic NSFW Instagram blast: You tell 'em! All of that came with this sweet photo: "The Walking Dead" stars really do have it tougher than most actors -- shooting major action sequences outdoors from May to November, through the intense Georgia summers. Negan isn't the real Big Bad down there, it's the humidity. The stars deserve medals -- or, at the very least, empathy. Want more stuff like this? Like us on Facebook. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Emma Watson Had 'Harry Potter' Cast Predict Where They'd Be in 10 Years Posted:
We're not too far away from the 10-year anniversary of the end of filming; at that point, Watson should check the list she had her co-stars make on set, to see if they really ended up where they expected. Evanna Lynch, who played Luna Lovegood, was the latest Harry Potter cast member featured on Entertainment Weekly's Binge podcast; she talked about the 10-year predictions when discussing her experience making the films, and her awe for Emma Watson. EW said Lynch was known to be the biggest Harry Potter fan on set, so they asked who would be considered the second biggest fan. Lynch said she had been surprised by the lack of fandom, in terms of the other actors, but she ultimately chose Watson as the runner-up Potter-phile. "She so appreciated it and she was a total book nerd," Lynch said. "She's someone who would really go away and think about her character on deep levels." Lynch said Watson gathered the Potter family together at a little party at the end of filming. "She got people to write down memories and stuff, it was really cute. She predicted where we would all be, we all had to predict where we would all be in 10 years." EW noted that we're close to that 10-year mark, and Lynch said, "That's terrifying! I don't even want to think about that." She didn't reveal where she predicted herself to be, or what the other stars said, but maybe that will come out during 10-year anniversary celebrations. Listen to Lynch's full podcast for details on her new blog, and her theory that magic is real and J.K. Rowling is part of an elaborate ruse to trick us Muggles. Want more stuff like this? Like us on Facebook. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Netflix Will Now Let You Download Titles to Watch Offline Posted:
The latest version of Netflix's mobile apps for iOS and Android now come with a "download" option so fans can still watch titles offline. Eddy Wu, Netflix's director of product innovation, announced the new feature (via Variety): "While many members enjoy watching Netflix at home, we've often heard they also want to continue their 'Stranger Things' binge while on airplanes and other places where internet is expensive or limited."
The option comes free with membership. As CNN noted, Netflix previously considered the feature unnecessary, calling it a "short term fix for a bigger problem," with the problem being Internet connectivity. But Amazon Prime has had offline downloads for more than a year, and now Netflix has done the same. Not all titles on the Netflix streaming service are available to watch offline. According to Variety, original series including "Orange Is the New Black," "Narcos," "House of Cards," "Stranger Things," "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt," "Master of None," and "The Crown" are available for download starting today (Wednesday, Nov. 30). Other offline titles available include "Supernatural," "The Office," "The Flash," "The 100," "Minions," and "Home." This is a big season for Netflix Originals -- from "Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life" to next week's "Fuller House" Season 2 -- so this may prompt more people to try Netflix. Or even give it as a gift for the holidays? Want more stuff like this? Like us on Facebook. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Watch Natalie Portman & J.J. Abrams Use the Force to Win 'Password' Posted:
Tuesday night, the Jedi mind tricks of Natalie Portman and J.J. Abrams worked like an operational Death Star against "The Tonight Show" host and, um, Neil Diamond. The foursome played the game Password, and even if Diamond weren't inexplicably obsessed with the word "salad," he and Fallon would never have had a shot against the Star Wars duo. Portman played Padme Amidala in the prequels, with Abrams directing "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," and apparently the Force was still strong with them, allowing them to pick up on each other's mind cues with little prompting. Watch the game:In his separate interview with Fallon, Abrams recalled an embarrassing improv show he did many years ago. It was so bad that Will Ferrell remembered it years later, when they first met.In her interview, Portman talked about expecting her second baby and celebrating Hanukkah and Christmas:Want more stuff like this? Like us on Facebook. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Writer-Director Nicholas Meyer Looks Back on 'Time After Time' and Forward to 'Star Trek: Discovery' Posted:  Writer-director Nicholas Meyer's career is still going strong after more than 40 years in the business, and it's already proven to have a timeless quality.Meyer first burst upon the entertainment scene with his bestselling 1974 novel "The Seven-Per-Cent Solution," featuring Arthur Conan Doyle's enduring fictional icon Sherlock Holmes encountering the real-life father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud. Meyer sold the novel to Universal Studios on the condition that he be allowed to write the film's screenplay. The film's subsequent critical and commercial success and his Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay allowed him to make a similar bargain on his next film, "Time After Time": He'd adapt Karl Alexander's novel -- featuring real-life pioneering science-fiction author and futurist H.G. Wells (played against type by Malcolm McDowell) actually traveling through time to the present day in pursuit of legendary serial killer Jack the Ripper (David Warner) -- if he could direct it himself. "Time After Time" became one of the most popular films of 1979, later gathering a devoted cult following over the passage of decades that most recently resulted in a new Blu-ray release from Warner Archives. In the interim, Meyer would become closely associated with another enduring staple of popular culture. He was the writer-director behind "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan," widely considered the best of the "Star Trek" films; he co-wrote "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home," the warmest, funniest, and most commercially successful of the franchise; and he wrote and directed the final big-screen adventure of the original Enterprise crew, "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country." And just to show that -- perhaps especially in Hollywood -- time has a way of coming around again, Meyer is returning to the Starfleet fold as a writer-producer on the forthcoming streaming series "Star Trek: Discovery" for CBS All Access, even as "Time After Time" is being adapted by Kevin Williamson ("Scream") into a weekly TV series for ABC; both series premiere in 2017. Now considered not just a classicist but a maker of classics himself, Meyer joined Moviefone to gaze backward through the years at his debut film, and to look to the 23rd century horizon for his next project. Moviefone: It was a pleasure to revisit "Time After Time," as I do frequently. When you think about this film -- your first directorial effort -- what is the feeling that bubbles up to the surface when you look back on it? Nicholas Meyer: The first feeling is what enormous fun it was to make a movie, and how easy I thought it was -- you learn all the wrong lessons. I had such a wonderful time. I was surrounded by so many very, very able people keeping me from making worse mistakes than I did. I remember plunging into a real depression when the shooting was over because I was having such a great time. The second thing that I remember, almost concurrently, is all the mistakes I made, all the things I did wrong, all the things I didn't understand and know how to do. I look at it -- it's obviously a very good movie; people have always loved it from the very beginning, but to me, it's a good movie despite all my mistakes. I can't help thinking it would have been an even better movie without them. One of the things that strikes me is that there were certainly time-travel movies and television shows prior to this, but this movie really takes pleasure in the complications of time travel, things that are a little heady, and that we hadn't seen that often in these kinds of stories told on screen before you made it. Tell me about approaching that kind of challenge -- to make this story make sense to the uninitiated, as far as time travel goes. I have to preface my remarks by saying that artists are not the best judges of their own work, any more arguably than people are of their own characters. The Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote, "I would that God the giftie gie us to see ourselves as others see us." It's tough. It's tough. So what I'm saying is sort of speculation that it should be treated as just another opinion. Because it is the filmmaker's doesn't make it definitive, and definitive is not a word in my opinion that belongs in any discussion of art. Anyway, having said all that, it seems to me that the virtue of the movie is that, ultimately, it's less about time travel than it is about ... it's a sort of sociological investigation into societies of over 100 years ago, and now, and what has and what has not changed. In other words, it's the time travel movie that has meat on the bones. Which is not to say that Wells's novel doesn't have them, because that novel supposes that in the distant future, the human race will have broken down into two subsets, the ineffectual and beautiful Elois, and the dangerous and primitive Morlocks. That may or may not happen. But "Time After Time" deals with more familiar contrasts. The contrasts between 1893 and 1979, and finds some mordant and distasteful irony in the fact that it's the Ripper who feels at home, and Wells, whose failed predictions of a utopia is lost. I think it's a movie with some mental meat on the bones. Throughout your career, you've demonstrated an affinity for these iconic figures in the popular consciousness, whether they're fictional, like Sherlock Holmes or "Star Trek," or real-life but legendary and mythologized characters like H.G. Wells and Jack the Ripper. Why do you think you have a knack for getting to the meat of those figures, but also putting a fresh twist on them for the audience? I really don't know, and again, taking what I say with a grain of salt as just one opinion, it seems to me that the difference between my novel, say "The Seven-Per-Cent Solution," and the movie "Time after Time," is that "The Seven-Per-Cent Solution" is a story of contrasting characters, individuals -- Freud and Holmes -- whereas the movie of "Time After Time" is really concerned, in a way, with archetypes: Wells standing in for civilization and a civilized, progressive, humane, forward-looking man. And The Ripper standing in for mindless, malevolent destruction. They seem to me, at any rate, in "Time After Time," to be archetypes in that sense, more than they are individuals. This is just my opinion. As to why I have an affinity for this stuff, I wish I could tell you. I wish I could tell myself, but I don't know! You've had to stand up for all of your casting choice for leading man, Malcolm McDowell. Tell me why that was important to you, at a time when Hollywood saw him primarily as a villainous type. I think it's very interesting. I love actors, and I love acting, and I love watching them become different people. It is true that actors, not only in Hollywood but on the stage, are easily typecast. Eugene O'Neill's father was typecast all his life as the Count of Monte Cristo. He was Edmond Dantès. He couldn't escape it. But I think that is arguably wasting talent and wasting an actor, and it's sometimes fun to see an actor that you associate as one kind of character, jump into something completely different. Having seen Malcolm McDowell as Alex the bad boy in "A Clockwork Orange," and then turning around and see him as Wells, this sort of civilized and gentlemanly guy, it's charming, it's a nice contrast. By the same token, we think of Alan Arkin as this comedic sort of person, but you look at him in "Wait Until Dark," and he could scare the sh*t out of you. He was one scary dude. It's exciting to give him a chance, and to give us a chance to see those contrasts. It makes him a more interesting personality to watch while, arguably, it's certainly true that it's easier for Hollywood to shorthand these people. Same thing with Ricardo Montalbán with "Fantasy Island," and whatever, but we forget some of his other roles, and of course as Khan, as the supremely malevolent villain. On the subject of "Star Trek," you're hard at work on your contribution to the upcoming series, "Discovery." What philosophical approach are you bringing to the material? I know that you became a student of "Star Trek" while you were working on the movies and refining your understanding of it. What did you take away from that time with the franchise that you're hoping to layer into what's happening now? I don't know that it's very radical, but I would say that I'm a very Earth-bound person. So "Star Trek" has always worked best for me when it felt most real. So whether it's the stories or the costumes, and I'm just a cog in the wheel on this particular show -- it's not my show; I'm just working on it, but I'm trying to make things believable, and satisfy myself that they are genuine, as opposed to so fantastic that I kind of lose my bearings and don't know exactly where I am. I think the best of science fiction always reflects what's going on with human beings. I keep trying to keep it, no pun intended, grounded. You quickly connected the dots between "Star Trek" and C.S. Forrester's naval hero Horatio Hornblower and found the literary connection that helped you with the material -- something that you later discovered "Trek's" creator Gene Roddenberry also had in mind. Have you found something similar in your new work on "Star Trek," or are you continuing to mine the Hornblower aspect? To me, the Hornblower aspect is ground zero for it. To me, once you use that as a template, everything else sort of, and I hate to say stems from, but fits in or grows from that conceit. Having said that, there are other ramifications, I think. If you look at "Star Trek VI," that was very much inspired by the headlines of 1989, 1990, the wall coming down, and in particular the coup d'état that took place in the Soviet Union, which, by the way, the movie predicted. We shot it before it happened. When Gorbachev disappeared, we were already in the cutting room. We didn't know whether that poor man was alive or dead. But that headline, as I said a little earlier, what happens during the course of life on Earth is a lot to do with what science fiction reflects, or recounts, or allegorizes, if that's a verb, but it's always about the human condition, no matter what planet they say they're on. You directed a pretty landmark piece of television with "The Day After," and here we are in this bold new era of TV. What's got you excited about the possibilities for you in the new models of television that you're working in with "Star Trek"? There is no question, as far as I can tell, that most Hollywood movies are not as interesting as the work that's being done on television. Now, my standard is not the eye candy standard. It's not about CGI, and motion capture creatures, and fantasy. A little of that goes a long way with me, and I get tired of it. It is much more interesting for me to watch people trying to figure out sh*t, and how to be alive, and solve human problems. So I've done two Philip Roth movies. I did "The Day After." These are about what one would like to think of as grown-up stuff, and I guess what is generically described as, "Oh, drama -- you like drama." The answer is, "Yeah, I do." Whether it's drama, per se, or comedy for that matter. I can only look at the exploding car so many times, and all the escapism that Hollywood movies in particular seem so enthralled with. It seems like the worse trouble planet Earth gets into, the more we make these escapist, costume sci-fi things. But in a way, I'm much more involved or engaged by movies like "Moonlight," or "Equity," or "Manchester by the Sea." They're just more interesting to me. Television is where you are likely to find a lot more opportunity to do that sort of stuff, whether you're talking about "Transparent," or "The Crown," or "Orange Is the New Black," or "Breaking Bad." For a writer, that's much more interesting. Your movies have been loved for decades now, and you're still hard at work. Tell me about that experience, keeping it fresh and creatively exciting on your side of the equation. I think you have to be very vigilant, so as not to either believe your own press or lose sight of your own standards, in a way, which is hard. It's very hard because you can start to coast on things that you know how to do, or think that you do well, or other people think you do well, and you have to fight for a certain level of objectivity, which is not always easy to attain, and I'm not sure that there's a royal road that leads to attaining it. But you're always having to look over your shoulder and say, "Is this first class? Is this really something that you can be comfortable putting your name on?" Or are you just, as they say, "phoning it in," and plowing furrows that have already been plowed by either you or somebody else? I always say, when I'm teaching a class, I say to these young or younger filmmakers, I say, look, as artists, the only thing you have to offer is yourself. If you're just going to do it like the next guy, then move over and let the next guy do it, because it's going to be boring. I have to be sure that what I'm trying to come up with is something that I really feel and that excites me. The French director Robert Bresson once said, "My job is not to find out what the public wants and give it to them. My job is to make the public want what I want." And the trick is to figure out: What do you want? What do you want? Not what you think other people will want. What do the fans want? To hell with that. The fans don't know what they want until they get it. If it was up to the fans, Spock wouldn't have died. You've always shown such a fondness and respect for classic material. That's a word that's been now applied to your own work, and people quote lines that you wrote back to each other. What is that feeling like, at this stage in your career, to know that you're considered an author of classics, in a sense? It feels really good. I like it. It feels great! It's nice. It feels like that the work has meaning, that it was in some way built to last. Who knows what the word "last" means. When Henry Kissinger went to China in 1973, and he got into a conversation, presumably with the help of an interpreter, with Zhou Enlai, and he said to Zhou Enlai, "What do you think of the French Revolution?" And Zhou said, "Too early to tell." A lot of times I think that when we talk about things, and we're very lavish, we're quick, especially reviewers, to praise things. We say, "Oh, this is a masterpiece." I once remember getting into a conversation with my father who had introduced me to the play of "Cyrano de Bergerac," and I said, "Wow, this is a great play." He said, "Do you think so?" I said, "Yeah, definitely. Great." He said, "Well, let's talk in a hundred years, see if you still think so." I just hope that in 100 years, if any of us are still here, or our descendants, or we haven't blown ourselves to smithereens, that somebody would be quoting a line or two of mine, even if they don't know it was written by me. Let's close on the topic of genre. You've made two movies, with "Time After Time" and "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home," that land routinely on people's all-time great time-travel films. What do you think is so appealing, eternally, to you and to the mass audience about the time travel story? It's such an intriguing notion that it's the only kind of travel that hasn't happened, apparently. We've gone to the moon. We've gone to Mars. We haven't walked around it yet, but we've trolled around it. We go under water. We've found the Titanic. The only kind of travel we haven't done is maybe travel that's either much faster, or travel that takes us into another dimension. There's something intriguing about that possibility, I think. Movies, for example, are such an inherently visual medium that the contrasts that two different eras presented with arguably the same characters wandering through totally different worlds. I know that Fox keeps trying to do another kind of travel movie. They want to do a remake of "Fantastic Voyage," which is another kind of travel -- travel inside the body -- and I'll certainly be eager to see that one. We like being taken by movies to places that we normally can't go, whether it's Antarctica, or the place where "Game of Thrones" takes place [Westeros]. Movies can take us places. Taking us through time is maybe the ultimate place where they can take us. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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