There are all sorts of entrées into Hollywood stardom (be they model, waiter, or producer's nephew), but Robert Hoffman went his own way: He moved to LA to pursue work as a dancer. Slowly but surely, his physical talents landed him lead roles in She's the Man and Step Up 2, and viral videos he conceived in his spare time (like Urban Ninja and the irresistibly bizarre YES Dance) earned him a sketch comedy show in development at MTV. We talked with the actor last week about his eclectic resume and his role in the upcoming Aliens in the Attic, but first, he had to overcome a minor tragedy.
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If what you seek is some respite from the parade of vibrating-panties and ex-girlfriend fantasms that passes for romantic comedy fodder these days, we'd guide you to writer/director Max Mayer's Adam, opening in limited release later this month. A micro-indie romance that was one of the first selections to be snapped up by Fox Searchlight at this year's Sundance, Adam tells the story of young, brilliant New Yorker (British actor Hugh Dancy) who suffers from the socially debilitating Asperger's Syndrome, and Beth, the new tenant who finds herself falling for him against her own better judgement. As played by Rose Byrne -- who's already made a name for herself Stateside playing terrorized protégée to Glenn Close's velociraptor attorney on FX's Damages -- the talented Aussie actress shows a deft gift for blending light comedy and pathos, in a performance that's earning her comparisons to a young Diane Keaton.
Movieline had the opportunity to talk to Byrne about her heroes (Keaton is one, it turns out), her upcoming turn as Russell Brand's significant rock-star-other in Get Him to the Greek, and what her TV nemesis is really like when the director yells, "Cut!"
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When we sat down Humpday heroes Mark Duplass and Joshua Leonard, Duplass was on a career high: He'd just held a successful first screening of an untitled Fox Searchlight comedy he'd directed starring Marisa Tomei and Jonah Hill ("They're, like, amazing as performers), and he was eager to talk about Greenberg, the upcoming film from Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale) in which he stars opposite Ben Stiller. So how did the mumblecore leading man and the Night at the Muesum star get along?
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It's time for another entry to our growing catalog of One-Page Screenplays, which we eventually plan on collating into a single, handy volume and distributing to sample-needy executives too A.D.D. time-pressed to read full-length scripts. (A nominal PayPal fee of $49.95 is all that's needed to reserve your copy -- order today!)
Past One-Page Screenplay contributors have included industry vets, but today, we're featuring an up-and-comer. Writer/director Greg Marcks (11:14, Echelon Conspiracy) has already attracted top-name talents like Hilary Swank, Ben Foster, Edward Burns, and Martin Sheen to his projects. Next up, he's adapting Jonathan Lethem's L.A.-set indie rocker novel You Don't Love Me Yet for the big screen. For us, however, he offers nothing less than a story of life and death with a side of fries.
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For audiences who've already slept off The Hangover, might we suggest Humpday? The indie comedy has a premise that sounds like it could have fueled a high-concept Adam Sandler movie -- two straight guys let their friendly one-upmanship escalate to the point where they find themselves locked into a dare to have sex with each other on film -- but it's deftly explored without any of the usual gay panic jokes that stud other summer non-romcoms.
Credit the film's two leading men, Mark Duplass and Joshua Leonard, for navigating the heavily improvised film over that hump. Duplass is no stranger to no-budget indies -- as a director, he and his brother have helmed mumblecore classics like The Puffy Chair -- and Leonard's acting career was launched by one of the biggest improv sensations ever, The Blair Witch Project. Movieline took both guys out for ice cream to talk about how this little comedy could put them under a big summer spotlight.
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Kieran and Michele Mulroney are no stranger to massive blockbusters -- they contributed production rewrites to Mr. and Mrs. Smith and wrote the draft that rocketed George Miller's DC superheroes collection Justice League to just short of a shooting date -- so it may come as some surprise to find that the key to their big-studio success was their Sundance Labs background. Five years ago, their script Paper Man won them entree into both the Labs and Hollywood's top rewrite lists, and this past month, the Mulroneys finally saw their finished Paper Man premiere at the Los Angeles Film Festival. We talked to them about how exactly the Park City experience can lead to putting words in Superman's mouth.
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When Star Trek came out earlier this year, Winona Ryder's elevated press profile brought with it a fresh new wave of chatter about a potential sequel to Heathers. "Whatever you hear, there is a sequel in the works. I swear to God," Ryder told Empire. "But for some reason the writer Dan Waters and director Michael Lehmann don't want to talk about it."
However, when we interviewed Lehmann about the Sundance Labs, he was entirely willing to talk about it, even though his prognosis was one Ryder might not be happy to hear. Read on for Lehmann's thoughts on the matter:
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As the director of the seminal high school film Heathers, Michael Lehmann knows a thing or two about navigating a world filled with peer pressure and backstabbing -- just the attributes that make him the perfect creative adviser to talk Hollywood at the Sundance Labs. That isolated, idyllic workshop experience in the wilds of Utah might seem like an entirely alien world to the Hollywood veteran, but he tells Movieline that it's one that provides some of his biggest artistic highs (as well as, on occasion, some emotional lows for the vulnerable, fledgling filmmakers gathered there).
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When we spoke to Alia Shawkat about her Sundance Labs experience, we couldn't let her get away without asking her about the two most curious things people are buzzing about: the Arrested Development movie, and that odd, poorly-synched viral video where she sang "Don't Stop Believin'" with her Whip It! costars Ellen Page and Har Mar Superstar. Read on for her thoughts on both.
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As Maeby on Arrested Development, Alia Shawkat had what's typically a luxury for an actor: the relative security of a stable television gig ("relative," since Fox infamously jerked the acclaimed comedy around on its schedule and made renewal a constant battle). Since the series ended, she's booked parts in Drew Barrymore's Whip It! and the Dakota Fanning/Kristen Stewart-toplined The Runaways, but as she tells Movieline, the industry's bottom line focus on box office was starting to wear her out. What changed things? The Sundance Labs process, where she got to workshop Elgin James's Goodnight Moon (in which she'll eventually be starring alongside Juno Temple).
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Exhausted the classic canon? Fed up with the current cinema of remakes, reboots and reimaginings? This week The Cold Case exhumes an early, underappreciated work by one of Australia's best-known acting exports.
Long before he voiced the rumbling Megatron in two Transformers outings, put male hair braidists back in business as Elrond in the Lord Of The Rings trilogy and tortured poor Keanu Reeves on behalf of the machines across three Matrix films, Hugo Weaving electrified discerning audiences with his breakout role in 1991's Proof, a little Australian film that was also an early calling card for a slender young chap named Russell Crowe.
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If you've got any notion of a "typical" Sundance filmmaker, Elgin James ain't it. Raised on a farm by Quakers, he eventually found himself drawn into gang violence, and after a fight that left him brain-damaged and homeless he founded the street gang FSU, which robbed drug dealers to finance straight-edge propaganda. Eventually, the film-crazy James ended up in Hollywood, and he's just finished a series of programs at the Sundance Labs where he workshopped the feature he's about to shoot, Goodnight Moon (starring Alia Shawkat and Juno Temple). Movieline talked to the filmmaker about becoming a Sundance fellow and what it taught him about flashy camera moves and, in his words, "being able to fucking do it."
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Reservoir Dogs. Boys Don't Cry. Requiem for a Dream. Those are just a few of the striking films that had their start in the Sundance Labs Feature Film Program, which nurtures a handful of fledgling filmmakers every year in a workshop environment shepherded by some of the best minds in the business. Still, for as much attention as is lavished on the January film festival, the summertime Labs operate in relative seclusion.
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This week's One-Page Screenplay comes to us from the fertile mind of Craig Mazin, the screenwriter of Scary Movie 3 and Scary Movie 4. Now strap yourselves in for all the sex, '80s rock covers, and spectacular sci-fi destruction you can handle, right there on That Explains That's first and only page!
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After putting in his time in a series of studio comedies early this decade like Road Trip and 40 Days, 40 Nights, Paulo Costanzo found his indie groove, lending his wry presence to the Douglas Coupland-scripted Everything's Gone Green and the horror film Splinter. Now, as Evan Lawson on the USA series Royal Pains, he's got an out-of-the-box cable hit to his name. Movieline talked to the 30-year-old actor about improvisation, Josie and the Pussycats, and that whole "de-Jewing" kerfuffle.
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