Posts tagged times

If you missed part 1, check it out here – http://www.flicksandbits.com/?p=370

The Film is set in New York but shot in the Isle of Man how was that like?

Richard Linklater: 1937 is long gone, the road we would have been filming on is now all office blocks. The one reference photo we had looked a lot like the theatre in the Isle Of Man, it really worked beautifully, it was a visual trick though. We had a good time on the Isle of Man, we spent about three weeks working, we were just in the theatre the whole time.

Zac Efron: It was great.  I didn’t know where it was. I was looking forward to that seclusion. From what I’d heard it was a pretty quiet place, and there weren’t a lot of people there. You know? I can’t tell you how appealing that sounded.

Richard Linklater: The girls did find out Zac was there and they showed up.

Zac Efron: Yeah, I found out there was a whole lot of people there (laughs). And we met most of them it seems. I mean, I felt pretty welcome.

Claire Danes: I don’t think anybody has been better received there.

Zac Efron: It was funny, we couldn’t really go outside that much. We couldn’t really leave the theatre… we were there a whole lot. Day and night.

Claire Danes: Plus the theatre was literally next door, adjacent to the hotel we were staying in.

Zac Efron: There was a tunnel from the hotel to the theatre.

Claire Danes: You didn’t have to go outside from your room to the set.

Zac Efron: I didn’t.  It was great! (Laughs)

Christan McKay: I found out while I was over there my mother came over to see me, I already had it in my head as a magical place making my first film there, she told me I was conceived there (laughs). So whenever I’m down on my luck I’m taking a boat to that Island.

Zac your character gets a huge opportunity by this bizarre audition, what’s the worst audition you all have turned in or Richard the worst you’ve seen?

Richard Linklater: I love the process, you have a character, words on a page and you have some preconception but I’m always looking for the person who embodies the character, you know it when you see it, casting is heartbreaking though cos you see so many wonderful actors. I rememebr seeing Claire audition for Dazed & Confused but even though she was a little too young fpofor the part, I knew she’d do great. There’s so much talent out there. I’ve never had a real bad audition, I might have wasted some time, maybe from a actors perspective they see it as a bad audition.

Zac Efron: I’ve had some bad ones, my first audition ever was for the live animation Peter Pan, I had just done the play so I was full of confidence, I showed up to the audition it was on tape in this small room, on stage you speak to the back of the room you are very animated and in the play your jumping around so thats what I did in the audition, when we finished the lady said you’ve never done this before have you (laughs) that was the worst one I’ve ever EVER done. It was completely my fault. I wept about that one.

Christian McKay: I’ve had so many I remember doing an audition for and advert I think it was ikea furniture, I had to attack a purple blow up sofa and I didn’t get it, there’s been so many, but I like the notion of failing I think its incredibility important to any artist walking the tightrope you have to learn how to pick yourself up and from your mistakes, you’ve got to fail though, how would you learn otherwise?

In the film, you see Orson Welles being very sensitive about critics’ reaction,  do you read your reviews?

Christian McKay: I used to say to my much more experienced colleagues on the stage that they were strange not to read their reviews. I always wondered why, I couldn’t understand it. I always take a certain masochistic pleasure in reading a terrible thing – I would go back and try to be better. But films, is so totally different. In Toronto where we first showed the film, there were something like 500 reviews, and they ranged from somebody like Roger Ebert, and emminent film historian and critic, to an eight-year-old blogger in a garage typing away. So I could now understand why my colleagues didn’t read their reviews, as it would send you utterly mad. So I stopped reading. I’ve got this romantic idea of reading them in forty years time from a safe distance, “son ofabitch, I don’t agree with that one”! Because on film you can’t go on stage the next day and be better. It’s done and it’s finished.

Claire Danes: I think it’s generally not a good idea to. Because they’re not critiques, they’re not written for you, the artist, so it’s not useful.

Richard Linklater: There’s different levels of criticism. I try to stay off the internet. It’s kind of a lose-lose. If it’s positive, you tend to think you’re better than you are, and if it’s negative it just hurts your feelings. The general vibe, you get it whether you read them or not.

Zac  Efron: Yeah you get to know though generally

Are there any funny stories that happened while you were filming this?

Zac Efron: Putting on a play, it was a bunch of actors on stage all day and everyone takes on an alter-ego after about six o’clock at night and we kind of go stir-crazy from being in there all the time. So one thing that I’ll never forget is the ukulele session that we had. One of the guys in the cast, Dan, was really good on the ukulele so he would kind of improv and play George Formby songs. But we would improv songs about people in the cast. We made one about Claire. What we would say is like, “Where’s Claire? Claire’s not there, Claire has the prettiest hair.” So that was one thing I’ll never forget. That’s not a good story, though. But it’s a clean, PG funny story.