Blue Steel himself Ben Stiller sits down with me to chat Zoolander 2 and the tragedy that held back the sequel for 15 years.
Ben Stiller on the Tragedy Behind Zoolander 2
in Film, Interviews, SBS, The Feed
Inside South Park Studios with Trey Parker & Matt Stone
in Film, Interviews, SBS, The Feed
Just how do you make an episode of South Park in six days? And what happens when you drop acid at the Oscars? Matt Stone and Trey Parker are getting set to bring the excellent blockbuster musical The Book of Mormon to Australia. For the first time ever they let Australian cameras into their studios to see how it's done.
Remembering Alan Rickman
in Film, Interviews, SBS, The Feed
RIP Alan Rickman. I was very lucky to sit down and chat with the man last year and the first story in the interview about his drama teacher hating his (now iconic) voice still astounds me. They said it was “like a drain pipe”. Remember him well because - by Grapthar’s hammer - he was bloody good.
Quentin Tarantino: Piracy, Learning Curves & Hateful Eight.
in Film, Interviews
You’ll never get an easier job as an interviewer than Quentin Tarantino. He is a total pleasure. He responds to pirates uploading his movie, he talks about his steepest learning curve and, of course, his brand new film The Hateful 8. Enjoy, share:)
Favourite Interviews of 2015
in Interviews, SBS, The Feed
I’ve been very lucky with The Feed. I get to interview some of the most fascinating people in popular culture, technology and media.
This year William Shatner opened up about losing his wife, Jeffrey Tambor spoke about his alcoholism, the girls from Orange is the New Black just mocked me, bearded Eurovision icon Conchita Wurst spoke powerfully about coming out, and electronic artist Porter Robinson taught me how to make music with Japanese robots. M Night Shyamalan wanted to end the perception of him as the 'surprise twist guy'. Rachel Taylor opened up about violence against women.
We challenged the director of The West Wing to a walk-and talk-interview, and Hugh Jackman was uncommonly political about the proposed shut-down of remote indigenous communities. Chris Pratt just straight-up flirted. Yes, that’s how I am choosing to interpret it.
These are a few of my favourite experiences this year. I hope you enjoy watching them as much as I enjoyed meeting them.
Also, you can sit back and watch them as a YouTube playlist here
GEORGE TAKEI
From Japanese internment camps as a child to becoming the iconic Mr Sulu on Star Trek to coming out as a gay man in his 60s: George Takei is a master of reinvention and he is more than happy to call William Shatner on his bullshit. In fact, it's worth it for that alone. This is my favourite interview of the year.
ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK CAST
Yael Stone & Uzo Aduba are crazy fun. We talk representation of women on screen and it turns out that they both thought they were going to get fired off OITNB, like, every single day.
JEFFREY TAMBOR
Jeffrey Tambor has been involved in 3 of the most groundbreaking American comedies of recent history. The Larry Sanders Show pre-empted the rise of HBO & cable television, Arrested Development pushed American network narrative comedy further than it's ever gone before and Transparent has lead a wave of transgender representation on our screens in 2015. Tambor himself is one of the most generous, sensitive and articulate people I've come across.
WILLIAM SHATNER
The original Captain Kirk has certainly lived long and prospered but Shatner's personal & professional life has been far from smooth sailing. At one point he was living out of a truck despite being a household name from Star Trek. He opens up about losing his wife Nerine to alcoholism.
CHRIS PRATT
Somehow in the space of a year Chris Pratt has gone from being an adorable side character in Parks and Recreation to anchoring the 2nd biggest movie/nostalgia-fest of the year (Jurassic World) and the best Marvel movie (Guardians of the Galaxy) But what is so striking about this interview is that you hear an actor talking about actually making a conscious choice to *become* a movie star. Many times in the past I’ve asked actors to explain their career choices but this is the first time I felt like an actor was honest about it. Also you can enjoy the fact that Pratt dances like a sexpest, falls over repeatedly and simply cannot whistle.
JOHANN HARI: WHY THE WAR ON DRUGS IS FAILING
Most people don't make a comeback with drug addiction. But Johann Hari is an exception to the rule. He was an award winning young journalist - and then 2011 it all came crashing down. He was outed as plagiarising his interview quotes from old articles. He quit. Handed back the prizes. And went away to travel the world, meeting drug dealers, mob hitmen and doctors, all to explore how our war on drugs is failing. Badly.
TROYE SIVAN
The YouTube star turned musician and actor talks beautifully about coming out of the closet in the age of social media and the power of the internet with a new generation. Sweet, articulate and very talented
CORNEL WEST
To many people ‘Racism’ is a sort of abstract concept. To the legendary preacher, activist and thinker Cornel West it is a lived experience that has coloured the way he sees the world. That’s not to suggest that he’s bitter. He’s not. But a life-long experience of bigotry has given him a view of politics, 9/11, Barack Obama that is fundamentally different from most people.
GEORGE MILLER: MAD MAX FURY ROAD
This is the man that invented the Australian Blockbuster. The original Mad Max trilogy was a modern action movie franchise that WE exported TO America. Not the other way round. The process of making the original nearly wrecked George Miller, and indeed his best friend Byron Kennedy passed along the way.
EUROVISION WINNER CONCHITA WURST
The Bearded Lady is the Eurovision Winner to rule them all. There’s a fascinating origin story behind the character of Conchita Wurst and the family that gave birth to her.
AMY POEHLER
Handcuffs, Hilary, Mental Health, and why you want John Hamm on hand when you give birth.
WALKING & TALKING WITH THE WEST WING DIRECTOR
Thomas Schlamme discusses Mike Myers, a blowjob and the surprise visit to The White House which changed the course of the career from one of the most prolific directors of our time.
MELISSA McCARTHY
Kristen Wiig made her have sex with a dolphin. In an audition. IN AN AUDITION. Melissa McCarthy is forthright, funny and fierce.
JIM MORRIS: PRESIDENT OF PIXAR
It's so rare to hear a business person speak with this amount of honesty about failure & frustrations. Disney Pixar are the most successful studio in the world. So what happens when you have to scrap everything halfway through and start again?
BILL HADER
Amy Schumer's hit film Trainwreck got a lot of attention this year as did Schumer herself but it was her co-star that was the real pleasure to talk to.
GRAHAM BURK: AUSTRALIA'S BIGGEST ANTI-PIRACY CAMPAIGNER
Village Roadshow's Graham Burke wants to sue you if you pirate movies. And he's very happy to say so.
ADAM HARRIS: AUSTRALIA'S ULTIMATE STAR WARS FAN
What would you do if you found out who had an inoperable brain tumor? For Star Wars fanatic Adam Harris, it was to fulfil a lifelong dream of travelling to a convention in the USA.
So, that's my list. Who would you like to see interviewed in 2016? Lemme know in the comments down below.
2015’s Defining Moments In 7 Gut-wrenching Minutes.
Every year Madeleine Genner (my wife) and I make a montage for ABC Radio National (and indeed all of the ABC) of the year in news. It always provokes much argument in our house but we still do it.
00:00 Charlie Hebdo and #JeSuisCharlie
00:43 “I’m a fixer” — Christopher Pyne
00:45 “Because it’s 2015″ — Justin Trudeau
00:48 #LibSpill 1
01:20 Bronwyn Bishop expenses scandal
01:30 Tony Abbott’s knighthood
01:36 Tony Abbott’s onion
01:43 Mt Everest earthquake disaster
01:55 Mina stampede
02:04 The Greek economic crisis
02:11 GermanWings Crash
02:18 Floyd Mayweather vs Manny Pacquiao
02:24 The Trans-Pacific Partnership
02:27 FIFA corruption scandal
02:33 Donald Trump announces run for President
02:38 US mass shootings
02:44 Syrian civil war
02:56 Aylan Kurdi and the European refugee crisis
03:11 The war on ISIS
03:26 Parramatta shooting
03:37 Reclaim Australia
03:42 Waleed Aly’s ISIL monologue
03:46 #LibSpill & Malcolm Turnbull
04:30 Michelle Payne wins the Melbourne Cup
04:38 Mick Fanning vs. Shark
04:44 Australia accepts Syrian refugees
04:57 Water on Mars
05:05 New Horizons and Pluto
05:07 Aung San Suu Kyi wins Myanmar’s elections
05:12 Ireland votes ‘Yes’ on marriage equality
05:18 Paris climate talks
05:24 Stan Grant on the booing of Adam Goodes
05:38 Passing of Malcolm Fraser
05:55 The execution of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran
06:24 Paris terror attacks & Antoine Leiris
TRACK LISTING
Nick Cave & Warren Ellis - Mary's Song
Beck - Dreams
Junkie XL - Brothers In Arms
WDL - Bob's Beat (feat. Mawe)
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis - Downtown
M83 - Outro
If you'd like to hear the Montages from 2014 through to 2011 they're all below.
Harrison Ford talks Star Wars: The Force Awakens, The Rolling Stones and more
in Film, Interviews, SBS
Harrison Ford is the living embodiment of the phrase "zero fucks given". In our interaction he's totally polite, considerate & militantly non-plussed. Also he can't remember partying with Monty Python and the Rolling Stones while making Empire Strikes Back. Which, I assume, means it was a truly epic gathering.
Making Sherlock: Steven Moffat Interview
in Film, Interviews, SBS, The Feed
Sherlock's creators on sending him back to the Victorian era for their upcoming special, and why Matt Smith was a perfect Doctor Who.
Why Is the Australian Accent so Hard?
The Australian accent is, evidently, one of the easiest to conceal. That’s why the Hemsworth brothers are anchoring every major blockbuster film from now to 2032. Virtually every Australian actor seems to lose theirs the minute they hit the international circuit. Well, except Sam Worthington. But for an accent that is so easy to lose it seems to be an impossible one to acquire. Most Americans seem to think we are basically British but drunk. ‘Cobber’ is not a thing that we say. At least not since Queen Victoria was on the throne.
Every time the accent is attempted on the big screen we all cower into a ball, rock back and forth and ask the gods of the cinema to just make them stop. There have been marvellous performances of faux Australians over the years. Jane Campion’s outback drama Holy Smoke!, a criminally overlooked movie driven by an amazing performance from Kate Winslet playing a cult member being deprogrammed. She worked under the tutelage of vocal coach Victoria Mielewska whose CV is a who’s-who of who didn’t fuck it up: Mental, The Dressmaker. But every once in a while you will encounter an Australian accent that makes you want to bash an actor in the face with an angry rabies-infested lobster. Case in point: Pacific Rim. The global robots vs sea monsters apocalypse tornado of bullshit masquerading as a film is loved by many. But despite the enormously fun action and the presence of Idris Elba, the film was basically dead to me the moment they introduced the two Australian characters with those noted Australian names ‘Hercules’ and ‘Chuck’ Hansen. One of the actors was American, the other was English — both sounded like they had suffered a stroke. So, in descending order: here are the screen’s Australian accents from Good to Bad to ‘Why are my ears bleeding now?’.
Mental (Australia) (2012) Director: P.J. Hogan
When trying to perfect the Australian accent, it probably helps to be partnered with an Australian. Liev Schreiber is married to Naomi Watts and in this P.J. Hogan film he’s the exceptional non-local. The Moochmoore family live in the sleepy coastal town of Dolphin Heads. There’s mum Shirley (Rebecca Gibney), dad Barry (Anthony Lapaglia), who is also a local politician, and their five daughters who are all convinced they have various mental illnesses. Shirley is also suffering an extended period of mental ill-health and often retreats into the fantasy world of her favourite musical, The Sound of Music. When she’s not doing that she’s busy ordering huge amounts of furniture. She tells neighbours her husband won on a game show. Barry can cope with the fictional Sound of Music world, but the furniture is a step too far and Shirley is packed off to a mental institution. Barry convinces the kids that everything is fine and mum is just on holidays in Wollongong. At the same time he makes a particularly dubious decision to hire a hitchhiker called Shaz (Toni Collette) to look after the family and from there everything really kicks off. Because the film does not yet feature a sufficient number of Australian stereotypes, there’s also an eccentric shark hunter named Trevor Blundell (Liev Schreiber). His accent is perfect. Terrifyingly perfect. Honestly, it took me fifteen minutes to work out that it was Liev Schreiber in the role. Most critics hated the film, but it actually captures the madcap insanity it seeks to showcase. While the script may seem utterly fanciful, director P.J. Hogan has said he based it on his mother’s mental breakdown when he was twelve. His father was also a politician who refused to tell anyone about his wife’s illness in case it hurt his electoral chances. And yes, as in the film, Hogan’s father really did recruit a hitchhiker to babysit the family.
The Fifth Estate (USA) (2013) Director: Bill Condon
Actor Benedict Cumberbatch specialises in playing nerds. Not your average nerd but nerds who are charismatic and, judging by the number of Cumbersnatch fans the world over, nerds who are a little bit hot. He perfected the type in Sherlock Holmes, received an Oscar nomination for it in 2014’s The Imitation Game and gave it an Australian twist as Julian Assange in The Fifth Estate. The film begins in 2010 with Wikileaks’ release of the Afghan war logs and then flashes back to 2007, when Assange is just a young hacker with big ideas. But the focus is on the relationship between Assange and journalist Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Daniel Brühl), who met the Wikileaks founder in Berlin in 2007 and began working with him. Like all biopics, this film is ‘based on a true story’ with a whole lot of emphasis on that ‘based on’ qualification. It’s been adapted from a book by Domscheit-Berg who later fell out with Assange, allegedly because Julian refused to redact the personal details of sources in the document thus placing them at huge personal risk. Assange has disputed key events in the film and argued that the biggest mistake he made was hiring DomscheitBerg in the first place. The facts may be in dispute but the quality of the Australian accent from Cumberbatch is not. He nails it. And it’s not just the Australian accent: Assange himself has his own wonky accent to begin with. It’s nasal but also has a strong baritone element. He has a tendency to mumble in truncated sentences and Cumberbatch pulls it off admirably. Not that Assange agrees. I spoke to him in the Ecuadorian embassy during the 2013 Australian Federal Election campaign and he described Cumberbatch’s accent as ‘grating’. It’s worth pointing out that ‘grating’ and ‘entirely accurate to Assange’s accent’ are not mutually exclusive terms. Unfortunately though, the film is a mess. It should be a great story of intrigue and espionage, but it all falls flat. And the key obstacle, I suppose, is that it takes real skill to make hacking and computer-related activity look exciting on film. Films have made it work in the past: The Social Network based on the origin of Facebook is a good example. But that film had a great script where this one leans on ham-fisted visual metaphors and a godawful over the top musical score where the director seemed to be reaching for the sounds of a bush-doof rave without ever having been to one. And while Benedict Cumberbatch may have nailed the accent, the same can’t be said for the filmmaker’s knowledge of South America. When Assange appears at the Ecuadorian embassy at the end of the film, the flag in the background is actually Colombian.
Evil Angels (Australia/USA) (1988) Director: Fred Schepisi
Oh yes, we’re getting to the bottom of the barrel now. The film, which went by the name A Cry in the Dark outside of Australia, tells the story of Lindy Chamberlain (Meryl Streep). Based on a hugely controversial true story, here are the facts. The Chamberlains, Michael and Lindy, were camping at Uluru and woke up to find their newborn daughter, Azaria, was missing. A huge hunt ensued with the couple insisting that a dingo took their baby. While there was initial sympathy for the pair, suspicion soon fell on them, with a key part of the evidence being that Lindy didn’t act like a ‘normal’ mum who has just lost a child. She didn’t look sufficiently distraught for one thing. Public opinion swung against her, a trial found her guilty and jail time soon followed. It took three-and-a-half years for the murder case to be quashed and this film was released shortly after. Streep’s performance has been much debated over the years, but while her accent seems strained and never quite believable, it works as a Lindy Chamberlain accent as opposed to an Australian accent. The real Lindy has a New Zealand twang and perhaps where Meryl’s performance falls apart is that it’s more of an impression than an interpretation. Which is odd for an actor who made a career out of nailing accents. The film itself is a courtroom drama, setting up the case against Lindy Chamberlain and then tearing it apart. It is a compelling story and accent aside, Streep’s performance makes it all work. It was a hard role — she had to appear as the cold and aloof Lindy that the public judged yet likeable so we sympathise. Fred Schepisi, who co-wrote and directed the film, intercut the courtroom drama with scenes where broad cross-sections of people discuss the case at dinner parties and on tennis courts. It’s a technique that works really well, showing you just how much the case was run by public opinion, wild rumours and gossip.
Natural Born Killers (USA) (1994) Director: Oliver Stone
Natural Born Killers was a film designed to shock and titillate — it was set up as a critique of the emerging 24/7 media and of celebrity criminals. The story concerns lovers and serial killers Mickey and Mallory (Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis) and the tabloid news storm they create (led by Robert Downey Jr as a mulleted Australian TV host). Oliver Stone has long been intent on documenting every incremental stumble in the downfall of the American empire and this was his ‘1990s TV violence, media, tabloid TV, won’t someone please think of the children industrial military complex film’ designed to appeal to those who felt that exposure to violent games and junk had the potential to turn a child into a gleeful murderer. In this period of the 90s you had Marilyn Manson singing ballads to Beelzebub, Doom was allegedly teaching kids how to kill, and then came Natural Born Killers. Stone knew it had the power to offend. Indeed, that was his intent. In the DVD liner notes he wrote with typical subtlety, ‘Didn’t Kubrick and A Clockwork Orange offend the perceived borders of violence? Did not, years before, Buñuel and Dali, with an eyeball and a razor, shock and offend?’ He’s right, they did. And yes, Natural Born Killers was a film that co-opted media violence to tell a story about media violence, but the only thing that remains shocking about this film today is Robert Downey Jr’s attempt at an Australian accent. Apparently Downey Jr. had been hanging out with controversial TV host Steve Dunleavy, an Australian columnist and journalist of the Rupert Murdoch stable that helped launch Tabloid TV in the US with the American version of A Current Affair. RDJ decided he wanted to channel Dunleavy’s accent into the role. More likely he channelled the cocktail of drugs he was said to be on at the time. The result is a fucking awful accent. But while Downey Jr’s Australian accent was a bit off it was in fact a good impression of Dunleavy. Where Downey Jr overdoes the vowels he absolutely nails Dunleavy’s on-camera faux self-righteousness. The film perhaps lacks some of the potency it once had. In the wake of Columbine and 9/11, this kind of violence pales into insignificance. There are now entire TV channels dedicated to crime, courts and celebrities. Even the scatter-gun MTV aesthetic of jerky handheld camerawork feels painfully dated. But that accent. It remains the single most shocking element of this film. So broad. So weird. So cockney, so nothing like what we sound like. In RDJ’s defence he did make up for his accent decades later with Tropic Thunder wherein he played a deadly serious Australian actor concerned with awards — let’s call him Crussel Rowe — who adopts blackface to play an African American.
Excerpt from The Planet According to the Movies - a Travel Guide around the world based on movies.
How To Make a North Korean Propaganda Movie
in Film, Interviews, SBS
Australian filmmaker Anna Broinowski wanted to learn how to make a propaganda film about coal seam gas. So she flew to the agitprop capital of the world, North Korea, to learn from the best.
Anna's appearance at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas
Rachael Taylor talks Jessica Jones, Feminism and Domestic Violence
in Film, The Feed, SBS, Interviews
Rachel Taylor has come a long way since Launceston. The Tassie born actress has fought off Transformers, she's been one of Charlie's Angels, she's even starred in Grey's Anatomy. She's also a campaigner against domestic abuse and violence against women, having taken out an AVO on her then-boyfriend, Matthew Newtown. This week Rachel Taylor is entering the Marvel Universe in the new Netflix series Jessica Jones.
Walking and talking with The West Wing director Thomas Schlamme
in Interviews, SBS, The Feed, Film
Schlamme discusses Mike Myers, a blowjob and the surprise visit to The White House which changed the course of the career from one of the most prolific directors of our time.
The West Wing, ER, Ally McBeal, Sports Night, Friends, Mad About You, The Americans, Manhattan. If you’ve seen any of these shows then there’s a fairly good chance you’ve seen the work of Thomas Schlamme. He has set the tone for the most influential television programmes of the last two decades. And of course he is the architect of those famed ‘walk and talks’ on The West Wing. So, that’s exactly what we do.
The Feed goes on a steady-cam mounted tour through the making of The West Wing.
Marc Fennell walks with Schlamme and discusses Mike Myers, a blowjob and the surprise visit to The White House which changed the course of the career from one of the most prolific directors of our time.
Here's a web extra: Schlamme explains the network battle behind Sports Night's incongruous laugh track
Thomas Schlamme, director of The West Wing & Sports Night, tells Marc Fennell about the network battle over the incongruous laugh track on Sports Night. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SBS2Australia Twitter: https://twitter.com/sbs2 Tumblr: http://sbs2australia.tumblr.com/
Bassem Youssef: The Jon Stewart of Egypt
in Interviews, Film, SBS, The Feed
"People were calling for my death while I was writing jokes" Meet Egypt's answer to Jon Stewart
Bassem Youssef has long been called ‘Egypt’s Jon Stewart”. The heart surgeon-turned-comedian has racked up millions of YouTube hits and his seditiously funny TV show Albernameg ridiculed politicians in a land where, well, they don’t often ridicule politicians.
He was drummed out of his show, declared a national security threat and now he lives in exile.
Marc Fennell sits down with Bassem to find out exactly how government pressure works in a nation like Egypt and whether comedy really does have the power to change minds and topple tyrants.
Joel McHale dissing Chevy Chase & Kissing Dana Scully
in Film, Interviews, SBS, The Feed
I like to think of The Soup as like, once you watch this you kind of don't need to watch the rest of American reality shows.
That's right, but the problem is if you don't watch the reality shows then there won't be the shows, and we wouldn't have the clips, and then it's an animal that eats it's own tail.
Of all the different shows that you've lovingly made fun of over the years, which do you reckon makes the greatest contribution to popular culture?
The Feed, probably. What is the greatest contribution? It's hard to say because it's been eleven years.
It's a long time.
Yes, I'm 64.
You don't look a day over 61.
Thankyou very much. When Tyra Banks had her talk show that was very helpful to us. Whitney Houston and her crazy reality show with Bobby Brown... that was a remarkably sad.
With big celebrity deaths...
Oh, this will be fun! Yes! Hilarious.
That's what I was going to ask - how soon is too soon for you? What's the window when you can make jokes about it?
It's not like we have a chart where we say, let's go after Judy Garland now, guys! We try to stay away from sad things and scary things. When celebrities are really going crazy with drugs and stuff, we stay away.
Really?
Oh yeah. We see ourselves as a late night chat show monologue. People will ask, what's the latest gossip? And I'm like, I don't know! [Inexplicably, said in an English accent].
Is your audience exclusively people who work in Buckingham Palace?
That was trying to be my Melbourne accent.
The Melbourne accent is weird. They say Malbourne. We don't understand anything they say.
They think they're better than you guys.
Yeah, they definitely do.
I did also want to talk about Community: the journey behind it is as storied as what goes on in front of the camera.
It should have been a reality show.
Would Chevy Chase have been the villain then? Is he as bad as rumours say?
He did not want to be there. If you go to Variety or Hollywood Reporter there's multiple quotes from him saying he doesn't really like the show and doesn't want to be on it. There were times when it was great to have him, but he didn't like the hours. There was a lot of drama behind the scenes. And we would never know if we were going to get picked up or not, every year.
What does that do to a show, when you're constantly on the edge of coming back or not - does it bother you? Is that why you keep doing The Soup?
I keep The Soup because it's fun, and it's with my friends and we have a great time, and I get to go to Australia and be in a strangely lit room with a piano behind me.
We expect you to play it at some point.
Oh, I will. Believe me. I'm going to be doing 'Rhapsody In Blue' in a second. Community was stressful, but you know, you just kind of give it to God and who knows.
There's also talk about Dan Harmon, the creator, delivering scripts late and eventually he was fired, for lack of a better term...
And then rehired.
What was that year like without Dan?
There's a few shows that come around that are created by one person, and they need to be written by that one person. Community was definitely that way. That came out of his brain, and it could really only come out of his brain and when it wasn't coming out of his brain it was not the same. I said, I'm not going to come back to the show which was completely different. It was not our show.
You've also made this move into dramatic acting; you were in Deliver Us From Evil with Eric Bana -
Yes, I was! Eric Bana - what a son of a bitch.
Arsehole.
Ugly, too.
Yes, the worst.
He's super-racist.
And also the new X-Files. I assume you can just tell us all the secrets?
Yes. Everybody dies.
Because the rumour is that you're the love interest for Scully. Why are you breaking up the greatest couple in television?
We just have a lot of sex.
The X-Files: Tinder edition.
That's right. I play a conservative radio and chat show host, and I believe everything that Mulder believes. Except I made money from it. I would say - how would I say it without getting into trouble? - I am an alien.
Scoop!
I couldn't believe was there. I couldn't believe I was saying their names. I was just like, Scully! Mulder! Wow, I said that out loud. On camera. To the people who are those people!
I'm looking at what Greg Kinnear did, who hosted The Talk Soup before you - have you always wanted to move into dramatic acting?
I took a lot longer to do it. I don't have my Oscar nomination yet.
Give it time...
I always thought Spy Kids 4 was going to be the one.
I thought your cameo in Spider-Man 2 was going to be the one.
Me too. It hs been a career disappointment for me.
I had always wanted to do dramatic and comedic acting, and it was just that comedy was the access point. For whatever reason in Hollywood people go, well that's what you do, you can't do anything else. So Scott Derrickson, the director of Deliver Us From Evil, wrote the role for me and then I had to audition to get it. And that's why the movie was the biggest hit in the history of cinema. We opened against Transformers, which I don't recommend. I don't recommend that. It was great fun andI got to know Eric Bana - he's salt of the earth.
It sounds like a backhanded compliment!
He really is! I mean, for an Australian.
Is there a point at which you will have to say goodbye to The Soup?
I signed a contract in blood, so...
Did Seacrest make you do that?
Yes. He is the devil.
Second scoop!
Not like the arch-devil, though.
I still love doing it and I hope the shows are fresh and different. This week's episode is a fake reuinion episode. We got Hayey Joel Osment and Jon Cryer, Connie Souphanousinphone, and we just fight each other the entire time.
Is it as good as the NASCAR episode?
I'm going to say it's even better. If you thought people drink at the Melbourne Cup, or on Anzac Day, you have not been to Talladega. It's an entire society set up of smoked meats and American beer. It's amazing.
Whoever worded you up on Australia, with Melbourne Cup and Anzac Day, has done an excellent job.
I've been here for both.
You have seen us at our worst. I am sorry.
Or your best? BecauseI think a sober Australian is super boring.
Okay. We're going to go drink now.
Why Pixar Shut Down Production on Good Dinosaur
in Film, Interviews, SBS, The Feed
Pixar is the world's most successful movie studio, but that doesn't mean they don't have near-misses.
Pixar Animation Studios have an incredible strike rate when it comes to hit movies. They've made over $6.2 billion at the box office and have an average review rating of 93 per cent.
So what happens when it all goes wrong?
That's what faced Pixar Animation Studios president Jim Morris on the new film The Good Dinosaur. Originally due out last year, they had to stop production, fired almost the entire cast and completely rework the story.
We started on The Good Dinosaur a long time ago and we had a basic pitch we all liked very much. We worked on it for a long time, and it took us a while to figure out that there were some basic things in the story idea we were trying to tell that we couldn't fix, and weren't going to work out.
We were fairly far down the path; we were three years plus into the making of the film and we just realised that it wasn't going to be good enough. Everything we tried to do to fix it just felt like we were overplotting or bolting something on that didn't feel organic. So we made the hard decision to stop working on that film and do a reboot.
There were still things about the world and the characters we liked a lot, but the story just wasn't working. All that is survived is some of the design of the two key characters. Everything else - about the story, what it's about, even the look of it - has changed.
Thank God Disney trusted us, and said, 'if that's what you guys think you need to do'; because otherwise we'd all have been fired for incompetency.
When you do make that decision to reboot and you've got an army of people working on a film, what does that do to the building? How does that news reverberate?
It can be fairly traumatic when we make a big change to a movie that's been cooking along. We've had we've had great luck, and great misfortune. I've had a lot of my career in different films I’ve worked on. Some have gone through the roof, and others just haven't landed in the same way. We take solace in the leadership ranks.
The point is to not put a bad movie out, and get the best possible movie. But it’s a little disturbing to people working on the project. It's a disturbance in the force.
There's lots of talk about the quality control that goes into Pixar movies. When do you know it's working?
We never know for sure that it's working…
Opening week box office is how you know?
That's how we know if it's connecting, and you hope it does. It takes a long time to feel like it’s working. We do a lot of screenings with different people; six or eight times we’ll project the rough version and watch it. They’re usually pretty ragged the first few times but there’s some core we keep working on, and getting at.
You eventually feel a time when it turns a corner, when it falls in to place. We’re more palaeontologists than anything else. We find a nice dinosaur bone, and then we find another, and another, and we put them together, and we think we’re making a nice brontosaurus, and then it turns out to be a stegosaurus. It turns out to be something completely different, but it’s gotten there in this naturally organic way out of the work of everybody. You discover what you’re making along the path sometimes.
Pixar is an extroadinarily successful company, but John Carter was the biggest bomb of 2012. Jim Morris reveals to Marc Fennell where they think they went wrong.
You were the producer of John Carter in 2012, a film that I really love, but didn’t necessarily get the sort of respect it might have deserved. When articles and numbers start to come through… what goes through your head when you’ve experienced how much work it takes to get a film like that made?
You question yourself; what could I have done better, what did we miss here, what were the things that went wrong? You try to take everything in your stride; you don’t pat yourself on the back, and when something doesn’t do well, you don’t shoot yourself. You live to fight another day.
There have been a lot of creative risks that have paid off for Pixar over the years. What was the one that made you the most nervous?
WALL-E probably made me the most nervous. I thought for sure we would be the ones to screw up Pixar’s success. It just seemed like, 'oh, this may not work'. The audience might look at this and go, 'what is this?'
WALL-E is such a ground-breaking film in so many ways, specifically that you’ve got the first 40 minutes of the film with no dialogue. Was there internal reticence at Pixar about that?
There was less reticence at Pixar, but some of our Disney executive friends were very curious about how that was supposed to work.
“Curious” is a good word...
Well, when you do the pitch, you say, 'here it is: we've got broken down trash compactor who is living on a post-apocalyptic earth compacting trash'. It does not sound like a great idea for a film offhand.
I think it would be safe to say that every producer, every director there has felt that. They’ve felt, 'we’re trying to make something good here, but what if it doesn’t work?'
Now that andy's grown up and left his toys behind, what story is left to tell? Jim Morris tells Marc Fennell what aventures lie in store.
Even Inside Out, which has turned out to really connect with audiences, but was an unusual idea. We all loved it, but at some point you go, 'I don’t know if this is going to work'. You work on these things, but you just don’t know.
I think a Pixar film is one that uses animation to try to get at basic human truths and emotions. They’re not things that we decide to be themes and then work into the movies; they rise up organically from different filmmakers and storytellers, but I think there’s a like-mindedness at all films at Pixar. They have that within.
Roadtesting Playstation VR
Sony released their new VR headset today at Paris Games Week. I take it for a spin. Much embarrassment ensues.
How Close Is An Accidental Nuclear Detonation?
Just how close have we come to the apocalypse? A lot closer than you might imagine. Just between the years between 1950 and 1980 alone the United States experienced a recorded 32 accidents involving nuclear weapons. That is according to journalist Eric Schlosser, who has documented the many times we've come close to Code Red in his book Command And Control.
There was one nuclear weapons accident in 1961 over North Carolina where a B-52 bomber started to break apart mid-air because there was a fuel imbalance on the plane, and as it was breaking apart the fuselage started to spin. The centrifugal forces on the plane as it was breaking apart pulled a lanyard in the cockpit. And that was the lanyard that a crew member would pull if they were above the Soviet Union and about to bomb.
There were two hydrogen bombs on the plane and hydrogen bombs are dumb. They're machines. When that lanyard got pulled the bombs didn't know they were over North Carolina not over Moscow. One of the bombs went through all of its arming steps, and when it hit the ground there was a firing signal sent. There was only one switch inside the bomb that prevented a full-scale detonation. That would have been a bummer because John F Kennedy had just become President and they literally would have had to evacuate Washington D.C.
Now this particular switch the following year was found to be defective in many of our nuclear weapons. They would have unloaded the weapons from the airplane and realised that the weapons were fully armed because the switch hadn't worked. If one of the defective switches had been in that bomb... it sounds so corny but it would have changed the course of this world.
Again and again, you find examples of hundreds, if not a thousand or more, accidents involving nuclear weapons that could have ended very badly.
The direction which military history has gone since the end of the Cold War has been to very targeted kinds of warfare, drone warfare - and nobody's suggesting that drones are perfect, they're certainly not - but there's a much more surgical approach to modern warfare and in that sense nuclear weapons don't seem to necessarily fit that trend. Do you think nuclear weapons still have a role to play in keeping the world safe? Does the idea of mutually assured destruction still apply?
I think it's more complex. The threat to kill all the civilians of your enemy country is effective. But at the same time it's a psychological threat. And if you get a madman as a leade.r or if you have a group like ISIS or Al Qaeda, who believe that dying on behalf of the cause sends you to heaven, then threatening to kill doesn't have that impact. So in the 21st century nuclear weapons have no purpose whatsoever.
This summer was the 70th anniversary of the destruction of Hiroshima; that was a really crude, inefficient, rudimentary nuclear weapon, and in an instant it killed 80,000 people and knocked down two thirds of the buildings in a big city.
We built, in the Cold War, nuclear weapons a thousand times more powerful than that. The nuclear weapons that Russia, the United States, China, France and Great Britain have are vastly more powerful than that. So I think everyone has to realise that we either work towards reducing the number of these things and eliminating them, or they're going to be catastrophes that make 9/11 - I was in New York City on 9/11, and I saw the aftermath of the destruction of the World Trade Center - that will seem trivial compared to what's possible with these weapons.
Can you ever see a future where we are disarmed, or is it just too complicated, and politically and practically difficult?
I think it's within our power, if not to solve it 100 per cent, then to greatly reduce the danger, and the first step is for people to be aware. These nuclear weapons are out of sight, out of mind, literally. They're in silos underground, they're in submarines under the surface; there are these machines waiting to kill you. It's as simple as that. There are still 16,000 nuclear weapons in the world. They're wired up, they're ready to go and if one of them goes off it's going to be a catastrophe beyond description.
RJ Mitte: Breaking Bad Stereotypes about Disabled Actors
in Film, Interviews, SBS, The Feed
Brett Lee: From Cricket to Bollywood Star
in Interviews, music, SBS, The Feed, Film
People have started to see the trailer for Unindian and they're going, ‘Brett Lee in a Bollywood movie - how in the hell did that come about?’
Well it goes back to 1994 when I first went to India. I was 17, got sick, hated bowling on the wickets, but I got home after two months and thought, I really loved that trip. There was something about India that struck this beautiful chord within me.
Over the years the love grew for India, from the culture to the people. Fast forward a few years, and I got a couple of Bollywood offers, but I wasn't ready. I was still playing cricket. Then this Australian movie came across the desk. I had a look at it and loved the script, loved what it stood for, and I thought, this would be a good chance to do my first movie. So why not?
One of the things I've discovered while researching this film is that this is not necessarily your first appearance. If you go through the credits of the movie Babe, there's the name Brett Lee there. How is it that you ended up there?
I was looking after some pigs in the agricultural shed when I was in about Year 7 or Year 8. In the movie Babethey used 52 pigs, because obviously the pig grows up, so they'd go, here's the next pig, and then that one grows up, because pigs grow pretty quickly. Apparently I may have helped with one of the pigs.
So did you not realise at the time?
No, I didn't have a clue. Someone said, 'Your name is in the movie', so whether it is me or not? Still don't know.
Just own it. Nobody's going to question it. It's on your IMDB page now. You do have this massive hit song in India that you wrote - how did that come about?
In 2006 I was over there for a tour with the Aussies, I met two people from a company and they said, ‘We'd love you to do a collaboration with Asha Bhosle'. They asked if I'd heard of her and I said, 'Yeah, of course!' This girl is an absolute legend.
She's the voice of every Bollywood song.
I didn't realise at that time she was 74. Not that there's anything wrong with 74. I wrote this cheesy, pathetic little love song…
No it's not! We've been playing it in the office for two weeks on a loop.
Your ears must be burning. When I went home and I asked if I could have a go at writing the song, they said yes. So I picked up the guitar, got the speakerphone on, played it and sang some lyrics down the phone. He said he loved it.
No one knew I was doing it from the team so I was sneaking out of the hotel. We're in this locked down hotel where security is tight - people can't really get in, you can't really get out. So I sneaked out and did this song, put down the vocal, put down the guitar, put in the bass, did it, went home, and then six weeks later get a phone call to say it's on the charts.
You making a hit song in secret is my favourite part of this.
Yeah, no one knew about it.
What's the most misunderstood thing about Brett Lee?
I get the tag 'injury prone' and that type of stuff. I've had two elbow operations, six ankle ops, broke my back twice...
Do you think sport fans in Australia recognise how much pain you guys go through?
It changes from person to person. Doing the trade that I do as a fast bowler, so your spine... I always say it's a bit like a school ruler. You get the ruler and you bend it and you get this little white line coming up, and you keep bending it and eventually it snaps. Well, that's what happens with your spine. If you keep putting your body under immense pressure and putting power through your body, something needs to give.
The person at the ground doesn't see the hard work that goes in behind the scenes, doesn't see the thousands of hours of rehab. And I thought it was a gentleman's sport! Mum and Dad said, 'Play cricket because you won't get injured, don't play rugby’.
We've had some interesting experiences this year in the interaction between sports fans and players on the field, like with Adam Goodes and Buddy Franklin. Do you think we prepare elite sportspeople enough for that kind of scrutiny?
No, I don't think so. I think it's becoming better these days. I think young guys who are 15, 16 years of age have had no life experience. They throw you into a team, put you in a jersey with a number of your back, and you become the perfect role model.
That doesn't always happen; kids are growing up, they're finding out about life, about guys, or girls, depending on what team they're in. They're trying to work out who they are as a person.
And you're also under an incredible amount of physical pressure with your time being taken up with lots of training.
Then you get thrown in a press conference and you've got 20 journalists, it’s just, 'Okay, you've got to make your test debut - good luck’. I think I remember saying, 'I want to bowl really fast and see some blood on the pitch'. Steve Waugh said, 'You might want to do that mate, but maybe forget the blood thing’. Then you sit back years later and go, ‘What did I say that for?’
Ending the War on Drugs: Johann Hari
in Interviews, SBS, The Feed
