Ask Away: The Best of 2011's Movieline Interviews

Chris Pratt (Aug. 29)
So there was one point when [Moneyball director] Bennett Miller came up to me, when Scott Hatteberg is trying to play first base and fielding [poorly]. It’s like spring training, and he came up to me in the middle — I was working my ass off; I was sweating -- and he says, "Stop being such a fucking pussy" to me. I was volatile. It made me so mad. I think I even spit at his shoes. I was like, "You’re calling me a pussy, motherfucker? After all this shit!" When I saw the movie, there’s a little bit of me mumbling to myself, furiously, that he put in the movie. So, I realized that was about the performance, it wasn’t about the camaraderie.

Seth Rogen (Sept. 1)
[On the effectiveness of Pearl Jam's "Yellow Ledbetter" in 50/50] That is very gratifying to hear. It makes the money we paid worth it. [Laughs] Every time I hear that song, I see a pile of money in flames.

Nick Nolte (Sept. 6)
That breakdown scene was heartbreaking. How did you prepare to let yourself go like that emotionally?

I just -- I've been there. That's how I got there. [Laughs]

Was it therapeutic?

Yeah, acting is always therapeutic. I became an actor because real life is kind of hard for me. It's really rough. I always searched for stories that I understood or was trying to understand about life that I could participate in now. That's how I started doing theater, and I did that for 14 years before I ever got to Hollywood.

Joel Schumacher (Oct. 13)
I know my work has angered certain people. But you know what? Another lucky break I had is that I’ve never been the critics’ darling. Now there are some movies where I’ve been very, very highly praised. And that’s great. Is it nice in some ways? Yeah, but a lot of my movies are not so user-friendly sometimes. I remember when I did Falling Down, and it was split right down the middle. Half the journalists and critics all over the world thought we were geniuses, and the other half thought we should be killed. To me, that’s a successful work because that’s real controversy. It landed us on the cover of Newsweek magazine. And now, as you know, the movies considered to be a classic. St. Elmo’s Fire was my third film, and nobody believes this, but it did not get one good review in the United States of America. And people think I’m exaggerating or that it’s not true, because the movie’s very beloved now. And even some of the critics who hacked it to shreds now talk about it as something they loved, and it was a watershed experience for them. So I wasn’t used to being the critics darling to begin with.

Anjelica Huston (Sept. 30)
When you won your Oscar, you beat Oprah Winfrey in The Color Purple. You’re the one person on Earth who can claim to have beaten Oprah at anything.
[Laughs] I know! She’s never asked me on that show either! Isn’t that interesting? [Laughs.] Well, it just goes to show, we all have a tiny capacity for a miniature failure — even if you’re Oprah!

Tarsem (Nov. 9)
I described you as the honey badger of film directors.
You’re the girl! That’s everywhere! Everybody sends it to me, thank you so much! I had about a million of them everywhere. Thank you!

It was my pleasure. But I’m curious to know; what is your attitude and approach to doing all this media, of putting yourself out there and yet having to temper what you say to a degree?
If I had to control what I was speaking, it would be a chore. Right now I just feel I’ve got my shoes off, everybody comes in, I talk. If I was an actor it could be a problem, but right now I just talk all the crap, I can badmouth anybody I want, I can say what I want and move on. I don’t have to put on a front. If I had to, it would be difficult and tiring. It ain’t; I’m just meeting people and telling them what the process was, so it’s not like pulling teeth. It’s absolutely fine.

Jason Segel (Nov. 18)
We wanted — and we ended up not making it as heavy a plot point as we envisioned it [in The Muppets], because it was too big a tangent and we had so many plots going on — but we really wanted to juxtapose a small-town perception of glamorous L.A with gritty L.A. We wanted stuff to be run down; we had a scene where when they first arrive, they get ripped off by a homeless guy in a Superman outfit in front of Mann’s Chinese Theatre.

Allison Janney (Dec. 8)
If I haven’t auditioned, I feel like I’m auditioning all throughout the process of doing a movie. Whereas if you’ve auditioned and gotten the part, then you feel like you can do your work. And yet I’m a hypocrite, because I’d rather get offered a part than not. [Laughs.] I’m very complicated!

Return in 2012 for many more installments of The Movieline Interview!

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