Also for Thursday morning's look at news headlines, Kevin Smith will embark on a tour promoting a Slamdance film, Obama cha-chings at an exclusive fundraiser in L.A. with A-listers, Matthew Modine lands a role in Steve Jobs pic and New York's Stony Brook Film Festival set to bow this summer with No God.
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Teenage Ansiedad (Cierra Ramirez) is lacking in role models. Her father’s unknown, her best friend (Raini Rodriguez) is faithful but a little dull, and her mother Grace (Eva Mendes) is a hotcha-cha mess who dates married dudes and behaves less like a mom than a deadbeat roommate. So when her English teacher (Patricia Arquette, vital in a too-brief role) introduces the concept of the coming-of-age narrative, hyper-precocious Ansiedad decides to use it as a kind of emancipation blueprint.
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Co-star Matthew Modine, promoting his short Jesus Was A Commie, explained why the notion to film the megabudget blockbuster at Occupy Wall Street was scrapped. "The wisdom of Christopher Nolan and his incredible team was that, while it seemed like a good idea to give [the protestors] an opportunity for work, to give them money, it would send a terrible message. At the end of the day, we're making a movie. What's happening down there is more important than that. To co-opt what's happening there and around the country... we didn't want to trivialize it. It was more important to respect what they're doing than to do anything that could potentially trivialize the political situation downtown." [indieWIRE]
"Originally, Michael Douglas was supposed to star in [the movie]. And he walked away. At that point I was left there with my then-wife, Geena Davis and myself, and a company that was already belly-up. We begged to be let go. We begged that we didn't have to make this movie." In fact, the couple was so frightened that they sunk their own money into a last-ditch script rewrite. "We felt that a pirate movie with a female lead was suicidal, but we were contractually obligated. [...] I personally spent a million dollars of my own money, I hired Mark Norman, who had won an Oscar for writing Shakespeare in Love." Even so, Cutthroat Island turned out to be one of the biggest box office disasters of all time and sunk Carolco production company. Lesson learned! [KCRW via SlashFilm]
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