Posts Tagged ‘interviews’

Hollywood.com asked ‘New Moon’ Director Chris Weitz 21 questions about taking on the ‘Twilight’ sequel ‘The Twilight Saga:New Moon’

What was your interest in coming on board a franchise like this, that has predominantly been more popular with women than with men?
Chris Weitz: Actually, in that regard, my brother and I often end up doing movies whose predominant audience is either women or whose kind of tipping point of success relies on a female audience. Even American Pie.

In as much as the Twilight series has a global appeal to women, I think it reflects that it really concentrates on the emotions of the central character and romance. And I think that’s something unfortunately that the studio system has not been very good at getting boys to be interested in. They think, maybe correctly, that all the male gender is interested in is things blowing up, and robots and that sort of stuff. I don’t really think that’s true. I certainly didn’t make this movie with an eye towards only girls or women being interested in seeing it. There’s a lot for diverse audiences, including older audiences.

But really, frankly, I was drawn to the cast and I thought that the central cast was great, and I wanted to work with them. And it also sort of employed some skills I had picked up along the way, including working with special effects, working with younger actors and working on kind of emotionally-centered stories.

Twilight, as you said, is very emotional, and of course, it’s got a lot of CG elements and action elements. Would you say that you’re in a comfort zone? Is this familiar ground for you? Obviously your early work was very character-driven.
CW: I’m never really in a comfort zone making a movie. I’m in a discomfort zone, because you’re always kind of working under pressurized circumstances because you don’t have an unlimited amount of time or money to do these things, but there were a number of things I was quite familiar with, and familiar enough so that I could do what I think is really important, which is not to foreground the special effects or the action elements, but to make those settle into the story. You never really want someone to watch a movie and say, “Wow, those were great special effects.” You hope that they don’t notice the majority of what you’re actually doing.

Obviously, people are going to notice horse-sized wolves and realize on some level that they’re special effects, but they’re photo-realistic and they should be as expressive as a good actor if possible. So in terms of kind of wrangling that sort of process, yeah, it is something that I’m used to.

Check out the article for all his answers plus his take on David Slade picking up ‘Eclipse’

Well Watching the Daily 10 on E! last night, I saw a promo for an interview with Ashley Greene (Alice Cullen) of the Twilight Saga.

The interview will be airing on Wednesday July 22 @ 7pm EST!!!

You will have to check your local listing to confirm & channel in your area!!

HitFix.com is continuing its parade of New Moon interviews with a two-part detailing of their set visit back in May.

While they didn’t get to talk to Rob Pattinson or Kristen Stewart, they did get a chance to talk to screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg, Jamie Campbell Bower (Caius), Rachelle Lafevre (Victoria), Stephenie Meyer, and others.  They also give a detailed discription of the Volturi’s castle and how we can expect ‘Aro’ to look!!!

New Moon Set Visit Day One

New Moon Set Visit Day Two

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Elsewhere on the web, director Chris Weitz gave an interview to Womens Wear Daily (WWD.com) on Noot Seear’s ‘Heidi’

But looks that could kill were only part of the job description, according to “New Moon” director Chris Weitz.

“We wanted someone who had an unearthly and unlikely beauty, but could also convey humor and menace,” explains Weitz, who reportedly also considered AnnaLynne McCord of “90210” before eventually settling on Seear. “It’s rare to find a stunningly attractive person who also happens to have the ability to act.”

What I find interesting is the following line from the article:

And the model, who’s already signed up for two more “Twilight” installments, shows no signs of slowing down.

That statement could be taken to mean that ‘Breaking Dawn’ could be on the way**

**No official word has come out on ‘Breaking Dawn’ from Summit Entertainment at this time

HitFlix.com has two more interviews from cast/production of ‘The Twilight Saga: New Moon’. These interviews are from screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg and “bad” vamp Rachelle Lafevre (Victoria).

Melissa Rosenberg’s interview

Within the span of two years she’s become a co-executive producer on the Emmy-nominated series “Dexter” and adapted “Twilight” into one of the biggest hits of 2008.  Oh, and she immediately followed that up with a tight schedule of turning “New Moon” and “Eclipse” into movies too.  No easy task.  Yet, speaking to Rosenberg on the set of “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” in May, she was cheerful, energetic and showed no signs of being burnt out.  While the subject of “Breaking Dawn” didn’t come up (find out more about that potential project with producer Wyck Godfrey here), she delved into her writing process and gave some tremendous insight to the entire experience so far.  Warning, it was a long 30 minute interview, but if you are a fanatic about the franchise it’s well worth the read.

Highlights from Rachelle Lafevre’s interview:

* Don’t expect that “gliding” effect to return in “New Moon.” The vampires speed is much more realistic this time around.
* Lefevre has been over 40 feet in the air for her three plus weeks of stunt work.
* Scenes only described in passing in the book between Victoria and the Wolf Pack are depicted completely in the movie adding more action to the mix.
* She’s been told to return to shoot “Eclipse” in August.
* Stewart participated in a very dangerous tidal wave stunt in a water pool that had her spinning.