A New York Times set visit for the upcoming Edie Sedgwick biopic,
Factory Girl.
From
Yahoo! News:
Oliver Stone says September 11 movie not political
BANGKOK (AFP) - Director
Oliver Stone says he doesn't know if America is ready for his upcoming film about the September 11 terror attacks, but stresses the movie is a human rather than political account of the tragedy.
The often controversial three-times Oscar-winner said "World Trade Center", to be released this year around the fifth anniversary of the attacks, documented a day in the life of two men trapped at the scene, their rescuers and families.
Speaking to an audience during a question and answer session late Monday at the Bangkok International Film Festival, Stone was asked if Americans were ready for the first major Hollywood film on the subject.
"Is America ready for 9/11? Is America ready for gay sex? I don't know," Stone told the audience, referring to Ang Lee's Oscar-nominated cowboy film "Brokeback Mountain" which has been a surprise hit in US cinemas.
"It's about a rescue and families involved in the rescue. It's really a technical attempt to be realistic about what happened in that building," he said.
Oscar-winning actor Nicolas Cage plays the film's lead role, New York Port Authority policeman Sergeant John McLoughlin, who was trapped along with a fellow officer in the mangled wreckage of one of the twin towers that crumbled after being hit by hijacked passenger jets.
Besides the sensitivity of the subject matter to the American public, industry media have reported that some people linked to the Paramount Pictures project were concerned that Stone may introduce his own politics into the movie.
Stone has been publicly critical of US President George W. Bush's handling of the attacks and their aftermath and in Bangkok told the audience that "the present administration has been a nightmare".
But Stone, whose film "JFK" was condemned in some quarters for pushing the argument that the 1963 assassination of president John F. Kennedy was part of a plot, said there were no conspiracy theories in "World Trade Center".
"No, there's no mention of that because it's truly a 24-hour document of these men's lives," he said.
"They were right at the heart of the destruction ... right in the middle by an elevator shaft. They survived. It's about their rescue and their children at home," Stone added.
Stone said filming had finished two weeks ago, with the last four weeks proving difficult to work in as the set was filled with smoke.
But Stone, who won best director Academy Awards for his war epics "Born On the Fourth Of July" (1989) and "Platoon" (1986) as well as best screenplay for prison drama "Midnight Express" (1978), said making the film had humbled him.
"It was a wonderful experience to go back to working class people and their ordinary lives, the cops and firemen in New York. It was a very humbling experience," he said.
Stone, whose films have aroused controversy ever since "JFK", said the political landscape had changed "radically" under the Bush administration.
"If we get to make films and plays about it, it will be an interesting era to write about," he said.
The September 11 attacks that left a total of around 3,000 people dead in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
CULTURE: Ghostworld's Daniel Clowes Teams up with Michel Gondry. Awkward Filmic Moments to Ensue.
THURSDAY FEBRUARY 16 2006 9:56 AM
SUBMITTED BY: AUREN EDITED BY: AUREN
SG's very own Daniel Robert Epstein spoke this morning with acclaimed filmmaker Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and got a juicy tidbit about his upcoming film, Master of Space and Time, based on the novel by Rudy Rucker and set to star Jack Black.
According to Gondry, Daniel Clowes, the master behind such screenplays and graphic novels as Ghost World and Eightball, will pen the script.
Daniel Day Lewis dishes on Paul Thomas Anderson's new movie:
Daniel Day-Lewis exclusive
profile Chris Tilly | Mar 13 2006
Time Out recently caught up with Daniel Day-Lewis, and as well as discussing new film 'The Ballad of Jack and Rose', the actor also spilled the beans about 'There Will Be Blood', his forthcoming collaboration with Paul Thomas Anderson (first reported on here).
'It's set at the end of the 19th Century and it's centred on the life of an independent wildcat oil driller' he explained. 'Standard Oil and Union Oil basically had all the territories bought and paid for, but there were wildcatters who were discovering wells all over that part of the country.
'They were almost always finally broken by the companies because they controlled the railways – at the time there were no pipelines to the coast so they controlled the price of shipping barrels of oil. Wildcatters could get three or four wells gushing at 1,000 barrels a day but they couldn't transport it.'
Day-Lewis will play the central character, who is loosely based on Edward Doheny, a wildcatter who ended up fighting the monopolies in court.
However, although the script is based on the 1920s novel 'Oil' by Upton Sinclair, the actor says it's misleading to call it an adaptation. 'Paul has made something so entirely original out of it that the connection is almost unrecognisable.
'It's an astonishing piece of work as it is on the page, and we've just got to try and make some sense of that. It's not a big budget film, but it's a big film. A big story.'
'There Will Be Blood' is set to start shooting this summer.
