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Cinequest 18 Press Conference - March 1st 2008 - Selected HighlightsJoint organizer of Cinequest 18, Jens Hussey, introduced the press conference on Saturday afternoon, noting that on the previous day, the festival had recorded its highest ever numbers for mid-week audiences. At this rate, the estimated total attendance of 80,000 people seems a strong reality. The following segments from the 90 minute conference should give you an overview of the talent involved in this year's festival. Robert Peters (Director) - Half Empty “It’s a musical filmed over eight days in Germany, and I’m very proud of it. We improvised the entire script and we did it for a reason. There’s actually an academy award category that goes unused every year because they don’t have enough films and that category is original musical. It has to be written by the same group of writers and as long as its original its eligible for that category. That was one of the reasons why we decided to make this film.” Heather Veitch – Pussycat Preacher
Christopher Masterson, Brooke Burns, Tom Whelan (Director) – Art of Travel
Brooke “These guys (Tom and Christopher) are the real deal, they have the heart of a traveler”
Craig Saavedra, Michael Shulman (Director) and Brooke Nevin – Sherman’s Way Michael “James Le Gros was an amazing person to work with. He actually taught me to drive during the filming and how to climb a tree. I’m from NY, who climbs trees in NY?”
Craig “James Le Gros said to me ‘Dude, I’ve been in so many films and I’ve never been naked in one before. I’ll do it for you but you’ve got one take. I said that’s fine; it’s going to be from the back. He starts running away from camera and he decides to take his pants down as he is running, not thinking it through. He totally tripped and did this somersault and we saw more than we wanted to so we cut a little bit of that. Let me just say, there are no small actors, only small parts (laughter). If James were here now, he could refute that.” Olivia Hussey, Jim Cole (Director) - Three Priests Jim “We filmed (it) a couple of years ago and just finished editing. Initially we wanted to use CGI for the apocalyptic fire scenes, but we were concerned with making that plausible on a low budget, in the end we hired the Montana State University fire training school to actually burn 20 acres for us, and then were able to take footage of this controlled fire and digitally composite it into other scenes.”
Shelley Cole, Chris Ford (Director), John Ratzenberger - The Village Barbershop
Shelly “The thing that attracted me to this character was that this is a person who gets knocked down and just picks herself up, I just love her.”
Michael Keaton After entertaining the throng of media types with a roll of gaffer tape, Keaton soon had the room laughing, enthralled by his engaging personality. He first talked about his new directorial effort – The Merry Gentleman On star Kelly (No Country for Old Men) McDonald “Inside the film industry people have always known how good she is. She’s also out in something else in Europe right now and so that will certainly help (my film’s chances of distribution). Kelly actually came with the package, and that’s how the film came about. I was offered as an actor. My agent told me that he’d seen a really well written independent script and that Kelly was going to be in it, and I’d seen a couple of her movies, and she’s pretty great.” On directing the film “ I had a conversation with the writer of the film who was thinking about directing at the time, and he ended up not being able to direct it, and it kind of sat there. I started wondering what had happened (to the film), so I picked it up and read it again and I just knew what that movie was; at least in my mind I saw it. I said ‘I know what this movie is, I know what the layers are’. One thing led to another and in a relatively short amount of time it was going. In fact it was too short a period of time to do it the way you should do it, it happened real fast. We had very little time to prepare this movie, but that turned out to be advantageous.” On co-star, Tom Bastounes “Honestly, there should be a short book or a long, long article about how this film happened. (Tom) was also part of it. He had never really acted, he had some Second City experience way back, but he was a part of (the movie) because he was one of the financiers. That was tricky for me, I thought ‘wow, what if it’s just disastrous?’ He required more work, which was great experience for me, but he’s good in the film and I’m quite proud of that.” On other directors “I really enjoyed being directed by Kenneth Branagh who is very hands on. He would have driven a lot of actors insane, but I loved it, I thought it was great. Steven Soderbergh is interesting because you never realize he’s doing anything. At first you go ‘this guy’s lazy’, but then you go ‘oh, OK, I see what he’s doing’ and then you see the finished scene and you go “shit, that’s pretty impressive!’ I don’t know how he does it.” On receiving the Maverick Award “At first I thought I was getting it because I was one of the few people who sat through Maverick (laughter). I guess what it means is that on one hand I kind of am, and I’m not sure what that is exactly, it’s like being called a rebel. Frankly, I don’t have an answer because if I hear myself saying ‘well, I’m a maverick’ I just want to punch myself in the face. I don’t think about what I do. I just trust what I’m going to do next or I’m not sure what I’m going to do next or I’ll say ‘I can do that’. And then go ahead and do it. Frankly I always thought that was the idea of the job and I get bored otherwise. I’m not alone in this; I’m in the majority, I find, as I ask more actors. If it’s a good thing, I’m glad to get it, why don’t we just say that?” -- Neil Baker Photographs: Kuldip Gill 06.03.2008 | Cinequest's blog Cat. : 11:59 Bolivia Brooke Burns Brooke Nevin Chris Ford (Director) Christian Church Christopher Masterson Craig Saavedra Entertainment Entertainment Europe Germany Heather Veitch James Le Gros Jens Hussey Jim Cole (Director) John Ratzenberger Kenneth Branagh Michael Keaton Michael Shulman (Director) Neil Baker Photographs Next Magazine Nicaragua Olivia Hussey Peru Robert Peters (Director) San Diego Shelley Cole Steven Soderbergh Tom Bastounes Tom Whelan (Director) Wings of Heaven Fest. circuit Independent Shorts FILM FESTIVALS
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