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The Beaver; Official thread
Topic Started: Mar 16 2011, 10:55 AM (3,949 Views)
clarice
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HD promo pics of The Beaver (no new pictures though... only the ones we know, but in HD): http://www.megaupload.com/?d=UZ0FK5QY

source: http://www.snd-films.com/

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Andreas
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Thank you Clarice you always find nice things!!
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jodiefan

yes, thanks for these.
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silverline
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXOlaLHu1Rg

another interview :)
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Artful_Dodger

Thank you all. :)
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clarice
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Thanks
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leslieUK
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silverline
Apr 9 2011, 10:48 PM
Cheers, I love watching her interviews :cheers
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Andreas
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Thank you Silverline and all for your contributions, I can't wait to watch the film!! :clapping
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Artful_Dodger

I know. May can't get here quickly enough.
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Gogo
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It's been announced that The Beaver will be at Cannes this year.

It will not be in competition but it's screening has surprised people. Good for Jodie
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jodiefan

that's great! hope she goes
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Andreas
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Gogo
Apr 14 2011, 08:49 PM
It's been announced that The Beaver will be at Cannes this year.

It will not be in competition but it's screening has surprised people. Good for Jodie
That's good news ^_^
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Artful_Dodger

Yes
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TitaniumX

Both Jodie and Mel will be at Cannes to present The Beaver. Also Robert de Niro will head the jury. Pretty cool!
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Artful_Dodger

:)
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Gogo
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TitaniumX
Apr 15 2011, 12:20 PM
Both Jodie and Mel will be at Cannes to present The Beaver. Also Robert de Niro will head the jury. Pretty cool!
I didn't hear that Mel was going to be their. I think they feel its safer in Europe for him then here in the US.
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Jodie at Cannes and DeNiro in the jury! Wow!
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clarice
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Interview: Jodie Foster on Her Non-Mainstream Approach for ‘The Beaver’

As the first question points out from the Jodie Foster roundtable at SXSW, the trailer for The Beaver is truly a disservice to the film. While a decent piece of marketing material, it really does showcase the film as a fluffy drama, and The Beaver isn’t that. Foster’s film is a dark, sad, witty, and poignant — factors that Neil’s review perfectly captured — story about depression and isolation, and how there’s no such thing as quick fix for that.

Summit can’t be having an easy time selling trying to sell this film. Not only for the obvious reason that I’ll refrain from mentioning, but for the simply reason that it’s difficult to accurately pitch a film like this in a two-minute time frame. Tonally, Foster goes for odd and not-so-commercial plays.

Here’s what Director and star Jodie Foster had to say about marketing, commercialism, symbolism, and more:

Press: I have to say, the trailer does the film a serious disservice, because it really does not get into the important aspects of the film. I’m glad you came out before the screening last night to say it’s not a comedy.

Yeah, I’m not in the business of making trailers [Laughs]. Well, in all fairness, it’s a difficult movie to describe. You know, I don’t think there’s a lot of movies you could compare it to. It has a very unique, odd and quirky tone to it. I think it’s been quite a challenge for them to tell people what it is. It does have a lightness to it and it does have a quirkiness to it, but it also has a family drama aspect to it and it has a larger, philosophical emotional stuff to it. Maybe it’s just the weight of it that’s different in the trailer.

Press: Would you be comfortable if it was described as a whimsical drama?

Sure. I would by happy if you described it as a drama with whimsy, too. That’d be fine, too. I think it mirrors the state of mind. At the beginning, as the beaver narrates and has taken over his life, you don’t really see the story of his life before his troubles. You don’t see him at Disneyland with his kids. And you don’t see him in happier times. He’s asleep. This other character, a survival tool, has taken over. The beaver has taken over at arm’s length. He’s someone that speaks at arm’s length, speaks in the third person, and only describes Walter’s life, and not in an emotional way. He only describes it in an objective way.

The beginning of the film is informed by who the beaver is in that way with that witty language and that, “these are the facts, man,” way. Little by little, we see the more objective sides of his life. We see him more objectively. Little by little, the drama starts taking over as Walter starts having issues with the beaver taking over his life as well. Of course, it descends. [Spoiler Alert] The last tonal style is this very, very realistic style of what his life is really like and what it really is to wake up in a mental institution. In some ways, in this crazy act of love, he has severed his own arm to say alive [Spoiler Over]. The film has the tone of the main character.

Press: Was framing the shots of the beaver obstructing Mel’s face? Was that something you wanted to subvert?

Yeah. That is something we did on purpose. Sometimes it would just happen in rehearsals and I’d say make sure you get it right in-front of your face, especially the scenes that, in some ways, could be played incredibly sentimental. The scene where the little boy says, “Why aren’t you coming with us? I don’t want you to leave me,” and he puts his arm around him and says I love you, and the beaver says, “I love you, too,” and it’s completely obscure on Mel’s face. In a way, I feel especially comfortable with the scene now that the beaver has obscured his face.

Press: You mentioned that you really wanted to maintain a distinct and consistent tone all throughout, was there one scene that you felt was the toughest to film from that standpoint?

It was more the scenes that we took out—and that will be on the DVD—that I found toughest. One in particular is when Cherry Jones’s character recognizes that Walter’s mind is falling apart, and he sort of taunts her to take off the puppet. It was a great scene, but it was too comic for that point in the movie, and we tried to find a place for it earlier in the film, later in the film, but it just didn’t work and didn’t fit with the sequence of scenes tonally without disrupting it.

Jack Giroux: [Screenwriter] Kyle Killen said it was your decision to have Meredith’s job be a roller coaster designer, and roller coasters could definitely be seen as a fitting analogy for the tone of the film and Walter’s state of mind–

As films do, you start shaping things, making them more precise, making them more specific. As soon as you bring on an actor, there are certain things that they are and there are certain things that they aren’t. I wasn’t as warm to the idea of her being a stay-at-home mom, and the few other ideas that we came up with didn’t inform the character plot and didn’t inform that growth.

We were really looking for something that told us a lot about her and told us, in some ways, where the film was headed. I think there’s something about people staying up all night talking to Japan that pretty much tells you they are alienated and have issues with loneliness.

Press: Was it about the theme of loneliness that interested you in the project? They seem to pervade the films you direct.

I’m interested in solitary figures who live as misfits and try to figure how to live and recognize others as misfits, because I think that’s art—it’s a lonely process because you take something that’s all yours and all personal and no one else can ever totally understand it.

And that’s what I’m interested in right now as a director, that’s my art. I may take a break from acting from time to time and then return in my 60s or 70s, but right now directing is what I’m interested in.

Press: You said this [SXSW] was the first time you showed the film before a “real” audience; were you pleased with their reaction?

Well, this is a film festival crowd, and they’re going to be a bit more forgiving and not monsters who try to eat you. But, yeah, I thought the reception was really good. I think people were up to the task, and that may be specific to this place. You just don’t have film, but you have music, Internet, and other things. Maybe you get more courageous people who are willing to try something out that is a little bit different than what you’re used to.

Jack Giroux: You mentioned the idea of art in your films, and when it comes to a film like The Beaver, do you think about commerce?

I don’t know how. I really don’t. A film like this is not a mainstream movie. It’s not intended for all audiences. There will be a lot of audiences that wont like the film and will be disquieted by having there be some lightness and drama in the same film. I think there’s audiences that just don’t like that. I think it has a bit more of a European feeling to it. The music is European, the way it’s shot is European with the formality of it, and even though it’s an impassioned film about mental illness and suffering, it has a very intellectual approach to it. There’s a lot of people who don’t like that [Laughs]. That’s what’s nice about getting to make an independent movie that is allowed to talk in a different way. It doesn’t have to appeal to everyone.

The Beaver opens in limited release on May 6th.

http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/features/interview-jodie-foster-the-beaver.php
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TitaniumX

Thanks Clarice :)

In other news: Jodie will be a guest on "Le Grand Journal" again, during the cannes festival happydance2
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Artful_Dodger

:D Good news. And thanks for the post, Clarice.
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lala

Hello, there. This is my first post.
From Ain'titcoolnews
Quint joins Jodie Foster and Mel Gibson on the set of The Beaver!
Published on: Apr 18, 2011 7:52:21 PM CDT

Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. This particular visit, an exclusive day on a movie which didn’t have any other domestic press allowed onset, was very exciting for me.

For starters, I had read the fantastic script by Kyle Killen after it hit the famous Black List and loved it. It’s a dark, dark comedy with a premise so crazy it had to work. A middle-aged man is losing his family as he sinks into a deep pit of depression. Pills, psychiatrists, self-help books, therapy… nothing works. His wife is fed up, his teenage son punishes himself every time he sees any semblance of his father in his own mannerisms and his youngest son is introverted to a such a degree that he’s almost autistic.

Just as this man, Walter Black, is at his lowest, inches away from a lonely suicide, he finds salvation in the form of a beaver puppet. By talking through this hand puppet Walter is able to say everything he couldn’t before. His lips move, his voice providing the words, but it’s really the Beaver speaking.

That’s quirky enough, but as the story continues you begin to have serious reservations about this pairing. What’s funny at first soon becomes a sign of severe mental illness… or something even crazier.

So, I was already excited that this movie was going forward, but my excitement quadrupled when Jodie Foster signed on to direct and co-star with one Mel Gibson in the lead, their first pairing since MAVERICK.
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I traveled to New York City to see Jodie Foster direct Mel Gibson talking through a beaver hand puppet. I must have rescued orphans from a burning building or took a bullet for a holy man or something in a previous life because that’s so crazy awesome I could hardly contain myself.

Especially when you factor in that I had a massive crush on Foster as a child. I know I seem to have a crush on everybody, but it was a real deal thing as a kid. FREAKY FRIDAY and CANDLESHOE did it, I think. Of course I couldn’t admit that to Ms. Foster. It’d be creepy even before you factor in the whole “I had a crush on you in those movies, but it’s because I was a kid when I saw them, so it’s okay… I don’t have a crush on you in those movies now, that’d be creepy, right? Don’t call the cops on me!” thing.

The film was shooting in a little warehouse in Brooklyn called Cinema World. This place was cheeseball central. The studio space was just like most studio space, but walking in the publicist, Larry (who started his career with THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR, which itself is pretty awesome… he didn’t care too much for Robert Redford, but that’s another story) and I had to pass through a fake library and a creepy-ass mannequin in a ticket taker booth. I later found out the upstairs was even scarier, with a tacky Pharaoh painted on the wall at the top of stairs built in a circular tunnel of neon light that pointed the way to a cave room that looked like an evil doctor’s lair from a bad late ‘60s Bond rip-off movie.

Oh, I should mention that the famous Radio Man was stationed outside the doors to the studio, the radio around his neck covered in a plastic bag to protect it from the chilly rain.

The set built in the sound stage was the top floor of the Black house. Everything that happened on the ground floor was shot on location.

Gibson was days away from wrapping out, so this particular shooting day was picking up various pieces from all over the movie. When I walked up to the monitors I could see a close-up on an obviously beat up Mel Gibson. He was looking at the beaver, but I could only see the back of its furry brown head.

This scene is the culmination of a drop-down, drag-out physical fight between Gibson and the Beaver. I was able to see some of the takes from this fight, shot the previous day, and Gibson would do Bruce Campbell proud with the lumps he was giving to himself.

But more on that in a minute.

They had just checked the gate on this shot and the crew was spilling out of the house. Larry grabbed Gibson as he came down the wooden ramp and asked if he could introduce me. Gibson agreed and came over to shake my hand. Up close his make-up looked even more impressive. His left eye was swelled shut, his lip was split and he had a bloody bruise on his forehead.

I greeted him and tried to make a lame joke about how he was a little beat up. I know it was lame because his only response was to say “It’s make-up.” After that awkward introduction he asked where I came from and I told him Austin. His face changed here, remembering, I think, that this pesky intruder was from Ain’t It Cool News. He might not have had any idea who I was, but he knows Harry and the site from his screenings of The Passion of the Christ at BNAT 2003 and Apocalypto at Fantastic Fest.

“Ah, Harry Knowles territory!” was his response, actually. He then proceeded to tell the crew around me exactly what Butt-Numb-A-Thon is and how crazy we all must be for sitting in one theater for 24 hours worth of movies. I pointed out that The Passion played very well even though it was the last movie of the night and he said that it did, but that’s because we were already raw and softened up by the time he got there.

There was some down time as they changed direction, so Gibson left to grab a rest and I was taken up to meet Jodie Foster before getting a tour of the set.

I gotta say, and I might be biased because of my aforementioned childhood crush, but I found Foster to be adorable. She’s tiny and came across as a genuinely kind soul. You know how you can sometimes tell right away when someone’s a kind person and not just acting nice? That’s the feeling I got from Foster.

There was no awkwardness at all and we fell into a nice conversation about the project and about a character I wouldn’t have a chance to see on my visit, that of Porter, Walter’s estranged teenage son played by Anton Yelchin.

I hadn’t realized Yelchin was cast before the opportunity to visit the set came up and I thought it was perfect casting. It’s the kind of role that I was sure must have been tailor-made for Yelchin, almost written for him. Foster agreed and said that even though she saw a few people for the part she never wanted anybody else.
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Seizing an opportunity, I had to make mention of Edgar Wright’s obsession with Bugsy Malone. Foster didn’t know Edgar by name, but knew of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. I told her that Wright not only loves the movie, but has publicly admitted to singing My Name Is Tallulah in the shower (thanks Twitter). She laughed at that and began to talk about the movie saying that she recently showed it to her kids. That film and Nim’s Island are the only two films of hers she has let her kids see.

Larry asked what it was, not having seen it, so Foster explained the premise and talked about how great the soundtrack by Paul Williams was, but how strange it comes across in the movie since it’s cast completely with kids yet every song is sung by either Williams himself or one of his adult friends. If you’ve seen the movie you can tell instantly that Foster’s own voice wasn’t used in her song.

We shortly left to go explore the set while there was some quiet time. There’s not much to say about these sets other than how amazed I always am when I see movie magic at work. It’s not a flashy set, but it feels like a real house… an upper-middle class bedroom, very clean, but with arty clutter like books, photos, etc… The way they lit the windows and had shrubbery outside totally gave the illusion of a bright daytime view, not a gloomy black-walled studio which was the reality.

After touring the sets we made our way back down the monitors, but I saw the title character sitting on a cart. I asked if I could take a close-up look at the beaver (yuk-yuk-yuk) and was allowed to get up close and personal.

There were two puppets, a pre-fight and post-fight puppet. The pre-fight puppet is that ugly deep brown that reminds me of the 1980s, with a tan belly, leather nose and eerily realistic brown eyes. The post-fight puppet is messed up and I noticed that the damage on the puppet mirrored the damage on Mel. The puppet had a blood stain on the same spot on its forehead, its left eye had gone askew and its teeth were crooked. I’m sure the matching damage was intentional.

During the lull between shots I was introduced to a producer who had them run some of the Gibson fight with the beaver puppet on the playback monitors. There was everything from Mel punching himself in the face with the beaver puppet to him violently punching through a wall, pink insulation flying, to one of the creepiest things in the fight.

What’s great about this particular shot is that it’s both deranged and funny, which is kind of the tone of the whole story. Gibson is pinning his left hand, the beaver hand, with the neck of a guitar. His character is triumphant, but the beaver strains against the neck of the guitar and the way the shot is angled it looks like the straining beaver is staring daggers into Gibson.

I was later told that they didn’t do a wide array of looks. There’s no “mad beaver” “happy beaver” or anything like that. It only ever looks like the original puppet, but in this shot it just looks pissed off.

In a gravely voice the beaver says “You’re not going to win,” as it bites the neck of the guitar (which means Gibson’s character’s left hand is now holding the neck of the guitar) and swings it up, splintering it over Gibson’s face.

This is a good spot to talk about the voice of the beaver. In the script Killen just describes the beaver as having a British accent, so when I read it I pictured something more comical, a stuck up prim and proper accent. Gibson went the opposite way, giving the beaver a gravely gangster flick British accent. Like you could confuse Gibson’s voice with Ray Winstone’s.

From the way Gibson was hacking and coughing after most takes where the beaver had a lot of dialogue I’d wager this voice was playing hell with his vocal chords.

The next shot had the most beaver dialogue. It is wide profile shot that pushes into a close two shot of Mel and the beaver. Gibson starts the scene slumping down next to a bed, gasping for breath. He speaks and the beaver’s mouth moves.

“Ain’t I given you exactly what you wanted? You don’t need ‘em, Walter. I love you. I’m the only one what really, really loves you. That’s why I won’t let you go back.”

Walter is defeated here, exhaustion showing on his face. His own voice is meek as he says, “I don’t want to sleep anymore. Maybe we can work on something.”

The beaver responds, “Sure, mate, sure,” and leads Gibson up off the ground… of course meaning Gibson turns the puppet’s eyes away and holds his hand up in front of him as he gets up from the sitting position.

There were many takes of this, timing the push in just right and getting the positioning of the beaver where it needed to be to be in exact profile just like Mel is. About halfway through the takes Gibson throws in a moment where his character gingerly examines the fluff from a tear in the beaver’s hide, damage from the fight, as the beaver talks, regret on his face.

As I mentioned before, this was the only full-on sequence I saw film. The rest were inserts, scattered moments from throughout the film. Simple things like Gibson opening a closet and grabbing a jacket or washing up at the bathroom sink.

Some of these were interesting because Foster was shooting them to fit into a montage of sorts, highlighting the similarities between father and son. Mirroring previously shot footage of Anton Yelchin doing similar actions these shots would end up underlining how much of Gibson’s character was in Yelchin’s, one of the biggest burdens for that character.

I saw some of the Yelchin shots on playback as they set up the Gibson ones. Each shot sees the camera moving from left to right, hitting blackness and then moving into the next shot. So, the camera would move across Yelchin, in profile, at a mirror fussing with his hair, move past him into darkness, then move into a shot of Gibson at a mirror fussing with hair, move past him into darkness, then into a shot of Yelchin grabbing clothes from his dresser to Gibson doing the same thing, etc.

You get the point.

It was during one of these small moments that I was really taken aback by Gibson’s performance. Listen, I’m from the Road Warrior/Lethal Weapon generation. Gibson was always the confident badass, capable of being crazy, sympathetic and tough at the same time. I figured that would be how he approached his work, but the man I saw in front of the cameras was shockingly vulnerable.

After every take he’d look to Foster almost like a child would look to his mother for approval, a mixture of hope and nerves on his face. I wouldn’t call it full-on insecurity, but it was shocking to me as a person who had one image of the man from his work meet the image of the man as he’s working. He wasn’t Martin Riggs or William Wallace running at each take like a ball of crazy energy, but a very vulnerable human being. There was nothing but confidence as the cameras rolled, but he leaned very heavily on his director before and after.

I suppose to a great extent most actors do that, but most actors aren’t Mad Max.
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When the crew broke for lunch I went along and was surprised to see Foster eating with the crew. I’ve been on close to 50 sets by now, I’m sure, and I’ve maybe only seen that once or twice before. It’s not that most directors hate their crew or don’t want to mingle with the commoners or anything, but they usually spend their lunches working in their office/trailer… planning shots or cutting footage together or catching up on emails and phone calls, etc.

Publicist Larry and I were sitting at a round lunch table by ourselves and I was grilling him on his previous jobs (especially his ‘70s work) when a plate heavy with meat and potatoes thudded down on the table next to me.

Gibson sat down, his crew and screenwriter Kyle Killen taking the remaining seats at the table. Saying I was surprised would have been an understatement. As rare as it is to see a director eating with the crew seeing an A-list actor eating with them is like seeing a Dodo in your birdbath. And if you do see one you’re damn well not gonna see them sitting with a geek like me.

Most of the conversation wasn’t about Gibson himself, but I did ask about his thoughts on George Miller doing a new Mad Max movie and he seemed to be happy that Miller was going forward with it, but not too broken up that he wasn’t Max again.

Other than that, we talked a lot about Old Hollywood. Once again, Gibson surprised me with a depth of knowledge about vintage films. From Bob Hope On The Road movies to vintage crime stories Gibson showed great enthusiasm for the films of yesteryear. He discussed producer Alan Ladd Jr (the exec that greenlit Star Wars and later produced Gibson’s Braveheart) with great affection (calling him “Laddy”) and went on to discuss Ladd’s ‘70s work and the work of his father, a famous star from the ‘40s and ‘50s.

There’s a level of surrealism that I encounter quite a bit in this job, but there’s nothing like trying to have a conversation with childhood idols. I encountered that when I met Steven Spielberg on the War of the Worlds set and Harrison Ford on the Cowboys and Aliens set and there was a little bit of that here as well.

Gibson was very low key, down for having a movie geek chat as he absently flicked his lighter or grabbed heaping forkfuls of mashed together potatoes and steak.

It was an odd, but incredibly cool and surprisingly warm and open visit. I hope all that came through in the above report.

Thanks to Summit for okaying the visit and for Foster and her crew for putting up with me geeking up their set for a while.

-Quint
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/49323
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lala

Another interview about The Beaver.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/director-jodie-foster-on-mel-gibsons-role-in-the-beaver/2011/04/19/AFH9aL5D_video.html
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Artful_Dodger

Thank you, lala. Excellent stuff! :clapping
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clarice
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Thank you lala! Great one!

Here's another one: http://www.examiner.com/film-industry-in-phoenix/interview-director-jodie-foster-talks-shooting-the-beaver

Interview: Director Jodie Foster talks ‘Shooting The Beaver’

Two time Oscar® winner Jodie Foster’s latest film ‘The Beaver’ where she directs and also stars is set to open in wide release on May 6th. After screening ‘The Beaver’, and my custom which stems from my years of working in the film industry, I watch a film ‘from black to black’, from the opening titles to the last end credits as it fades to black…

As ‘The Beaver’ faded to black, I had the same instinctual reaction for it as I had for ‘The King’s Speech’ and director Tom Hooper’, thinking ‘What a powerful piece of filmmaking’, took a deep breath and thought, I have to have a conversation with Jodie Foster.

‘The Beaver’ is the story of Walter Black (Mel Gibson) a troubled husband and father, a successful toy executive, who now suffers from depression. No matter what he tries, Walter can’t seem to get himself back on track until he adopts a beaver hand puppet as his sole means of communicating.

The cast of ‘The Beaver’ includes Jennifer Lawrence who received a best actress nomination for last year’s ‘Winter’s Bone’, Mel Gibson with two Oscar® wins for 1995s ‘Braveheart’ as director & best picture, Jodie Foster with two Oscars® for best actress for ‘The Accused’ (1988) and ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ (1991), Anton Yelchin, Michelle Ang, Zachary Booth, and Riley Thomas Stewart, with Jodie Foster as director.

Yes, there’s sure to be a ‘lot of buzz’ surrounding ‘The Beaver’ with Mel Gibson being prominently in the news. For the record, I learned quite some time ago while working on various film projects for over 30 years, to separate the professional expertise of cast and crew from the public reporting of personal issues. In fact, I had the experience of working on the shooting of the opening sequence to ‘Lethal Weapon 3’ (1992) in Orlando, FL and one couldn’t ask for a better commitment from Mel Gibson and Danny Glover than they have for the art form.

On a firm path of directing, her previous directorial projects include ‘Little Man Tate’ (1991) and ‘Home for the Holidays’ (1995), I asked Jodie did she find ‘The Beaver’ or did it find her…

Jodie: “Well, it was kind of a combination of them both, it had been around for a while, it was on the ‘black list’ which is the 100 best unproduced screenplays and I read that and said ‘wow’ this is amazing but an agent said yea but another director is involved. I said well; if anything ever happens to that involvement just call me up. It didn’t and it moved on to me!”

Stan: Now that the screenplay was yours, the next logical step would be to get actors attached to it,

Jodie: “That’s pretty much it, and I brought Mel Gibson on, and based on that we went to look for a distributor. That was also challenging, it’s a difficult movie and we knew we wanted to make it independently. There were a lot of reasons why and the studios were certainly weary and also the other independents were weary, and Summit came forward and were so supportive, and I think they really ‘got’ what the film was about and really embraced the vision of the movie, and were able to ‘hop on’ right away!

Stan: Your actors are attached; you shoot your film, and now its set for release. I’m thinking in the back of my mind, with Mel being in the news, one can’t buy that kind of press to draw attention to such a wonderful emotionally stirring film!

Jodie: Well I don’t know (with a chuckle), if it’s a good thing, I’m sure its not but he’s an amazing actor and he’s extraordinary in the film and I’m forever grateful that he said yes, and that he ‘brought’ what he brought to the table. He’s able to be quite witty, and light, and also transitioning into something very, very dark and deep. He is complex, and brings all that complexity to his performance!

Stan: You mention a key element of the role where Walter, Mel Gibson’s character, are two distinct personalities, a real challenge for an actor to accomplish within the role to achieve your vision as the director!

Jodie: “That’s true, every decision that you make, the film becomes more and more shaped towards what it’s going to be. Every decision whether what kind of film you’re going to use, what lens one chooses, or framing, music, and it takes shape, almost like a person takes shape!”

Stan: Spoken like a true filmmaker! (Both chuckle) From my experience on sets, there’s always that challenging sequence to try to capture on film, what might that one be for ‘The Beaver’

Jodie: “Yea, good question! Probably the most challenging, and, the one we re-shot that really had gone though a lot of different incarnations was ‘What is the final reconciliation between the father and the son.’ There were a lot of ideas of what that needed to be, did they need to confess everything that they had felt in their lives, did they need to apologize, and by the time we got to the end of the process, what we realized was that it needed to be incredibly, incredibly small and simple. It took a long while to be able to figure that out.

Stan: And figured it out you did, the ending allows us to soak in the totality of their relationship! What’s the reaction to ‘The Beaver’ at screenings so far?

Jodie: “It’s been very positive so far! I know that the movie in some ways that the movie is not for everybody because it has an odd, quirky tone to it that I love, but interestingly I think people are really hungry for that, there isn’t another movie like it, and it ask a lot of them emotionally. People can relate to life as we get older, it gets heavy, and in Walter’s case its not just simple depression, it chemical depression and he really does need medication, it not just ‘talk therapy’ that’s going to cure him. You can see that he’s been carrying around this weight and these burdens from his life and in the midst of a spiritual crises, and the beaver tool is a survival tool for him, a way for him to survive in tact.”

Stan: Jodie, is directing where you want to settle into in the end, and I know it’s a loaded question, forgive me…

Jodie: ‘No its not Stan, it’s a good question (chuckle) and I’m definitely up for more directing and less acting but I can’t imagine quitting acting, its something I’ve done since I was three years old, its a long time!

Stan: Spoken like a true Scorpio, take it from someone who knows, I’ll always be involved in the industry in some form or fashion until the very end! I mentioned the instances where your work was a bridge for me to get through some very tough times… [Jodie cuts in]

Jodie: “We have a lot of parellels, you and I”

Stan: That’s because you’re a Scorpio too!

Jodie: “Really, that’s good! You should meet my two Scorpio sisters too, so much power there!”

Stan: We’re getting the signal our time is up, I really appreciate you sharing this time with me, much success with your latest ‘The Beaver’, and Jodie, I’ll be keeping an eye out for your work for years to come!

Jodie: “Thank you so very much, I’ve really enjoyed talking you!”

# # #

‘The Beaver’ Starring Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster, Anton Yelchin, Jennifer Lawrence, Cherry Jones, Michelle Ang, Zachary Booth, and Riley Thomas Stewart.

Directed by Jodie Foster. Written by Kyle Killen. Summit Entertainment release. Rated PG-13 for mature thematic material, some disturbing content, sexuality and language including a drug reference
Edited by clarice, Apr 20 2011, 12:33 PM.
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Artful_Dodger

Thank you, Clarice, again. :)
Edited by Artful_Dodger, Apr 20 2011, 03:23 PM.
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Andreas
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Thank you and welcome Lala!! :greet

I love reading all these interviews and reports. Is it me or time goes by really slowly, and it feels like May is in six months?! Waiting for movies is always a pain!! :bored I remember waiting for The Brave One and dying!!
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Artful_Dodger

I'm enjoying all the interviews and articles too. Everyday now is a treat. :) Probably won't be that way after the movie goes into wide release though. :(
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silverline
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Thanx lala and clarice. Great stuff!
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jodiefan

lala
Apr 20 2011, 02:46 AM
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i love this pic, first time i'm seeing it. i love how the beaver looks like he's reading the paper too lol

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Jodie: “Really, that’s good! You should meet my two Scorpio sisters too, so much power there!”

damn, it must be hell on earth when they're all gathered in a room. do you guys know any scorpio? i dated one and it took me two years to recover lol

great stuff guys, thanks.
Edited by jodiefan, Apr 20 2011, 09:14 PM.
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silverline
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oh yes I know plenty of scorpios :biggrin .Being a cancerian i seem to be stuck with them. :bs . They are very charming, fascinating and massive heartbreakers beyond recovery....
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