we’ve posted these before in MQ, but now they’re in HQ
Archive for the ‘David Cronenberg’ Tag
Pictures of Robert Pattinson at the NYSE Now in HQ Leave a comment
New Robert Pattinson and David Cronenberg Interview with Detroit Free Press 2 comments
From Detroit Free Press
Is the 26-year-old actor tired of getting media food bribes? “Food bribes,” he repeats rather quizzically. “Oh yeah, I got offered some Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal this morning. I don’t even know (why). I haven’t had Cinnamon Toast Crunch for about six years. I actually ate some french fries just before these interviews. I had a carbohydrate O.D.”
The pleasant British chap talking on the phone could be any hot young star promoting a movie. Except that he’s not just anyone. He’s RPattz, the hunk from the phenomenally successful “Twilight” films.During this interview, he politely deflects a question about the comparisons between the movie’s strange world and the weird celebrity-driven culture that surrounds him. “I don’t know if our culture is celebrity-driven at all,” he says. “I think it just drives itself.”
David Cronenberg talks about Robert Pattinson with St. Louis Post Dispatch 2 comments
David Cronenberg talks about Rob in an interview with St. Louis Post Dispatch
Then the director snared Pattinson, one of the hottest actors on the planet. But “Cosmopolis,” which opens locally Friday, is not a multiplex-ready entertainment or even a horror film. Based on a novel by Don DeLillo (“White Noise”), it’s a day in the life of a paranoid billionaire who runs his empire, beds his lover and checks his prostate in the back seat of a limo that’s circling Manhattan.
To get the movie made, Cronenberg, 69, had to enter the sanctum of the same kind of kingpin who is satirized in the movie.
“One of our investors in this film is known as the French Warren Buffet,” Cronenberg told me when I passed the distributor’s background check and was able to chat with him on the phone recently. “One of the reasons he wanted to get involved is because he says he deals with people like Robert’s character all the time. They live in a kind of bubble of unreality. They handle billions of dollars every day but they never really touch money. He felt that this story was strangely accurate.
The ace up Cronenberg’s sleeve was Pattinson, who attracted investors and then delivered a performance that leveraged his vampire persona from the “Twilight” movies. “I don’t mind the metaphor of a blood-sucking businessman,” Cronenberg said, “but by the end of the movie, as he’s thinking about his past and visiting his childhood barber, he’s a much more vulnerable character.
New Robert Pattinson and David Cronenberg Interview with The Columbus Dispatch – NYC Cosmopolis Press Junket 2 comments
Here’s a new interview from Rob and David. Part of the interview was posted here
When the noted independent filmmaker, whose credits include A History of Violence (2005) and Eastern Promises (2007), gave Pattinson the script for Cosmopolis — based on the Don DeLillo novel — the actor could see himself as Eric Parker, the 28-year-old billionaire asset manager whose world falls apart around him as he rides in his stretch limo to get a haircut while wagering his company’s massive fortune on a bet. But Pattinson had one problem.
“I was honest with David and said that I loved his script, but I didn’t fully understand it,” Pattinson says. “I knew, if I tried to have a BS conversation about it, that David would call me out.”
Cronenberg, too, had some reservations — about Pattinson. “Could this British guy do a New York accent where it’s not agonizing?” the filmmaker recalls wondering. “Could he play that age? Does he have the charisma to hold the audience for the whole movie, because he’s literally in every scene? “I did my homework and watched Little Ashes (2008) and Remember Me (2010),” Cronenberg says. “I even watched interviews that Robert did. I wanted to know what this guy was like when he was just being himself. I wanted to get a feel of what he was like as a person. I wanted to know that he had a sense of humor, and he does.
“I finally said, ‘OK, this is the right guy.’ ”Most of Pattinson’s films have required him to forgo his natural British accent, so he had no problem finding Eric’s New York speech patterns.
“I don’t even know what accent I was doing half of the time,” he admits. “I always found that the dialect was written in the lines. The voice was also part of the preparation. I wasn’t even trying to get a New York accent.”
His next film is, of course, the series-ending Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 2, due in November. Cosmopolis is nothing like that, which is by design. “I try to do something different from vampire Edward Cullen each time I’m not doing a Twilight film,” Pattinson says. “I even try to make him different each time I do Twilight.”
As a child growing up in London, Pattinson had dreams of stardom, but they involved music. That he ended up as an actor still bemuses him. “When I’m asked to write down my occupation, it’s still hard for me to write actor.”
After auditioning for Troy (2004) but not getting the part, Pattinson was cast in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) as the handsome, charming and doomed Cedric Diggory. Three years later, he began his turn as soulful vampire Edward Cullen. For “Twi-hards” dreading the end of the film franchise, Pattinson offers some words of hope. “I’m sure they’ll have a Twilight TV-series spinoff soon,” he says. “They’ll do it again.” That presumably wouldn’t involve Pattinson. There is talk of a film prequel, however. Would he be willing to play Edward again? “Who knows?” says Pattinson, laughing. “The only thing that creates a little bit of a problem is that I’m supposed to be 17 forever.
*VIDEO* David Cronenberg talks about Robert Pattinson and Twilight Leave a comment
This Q&A happened during Cosmopolis promo in Europe – On May 30th in Paris, but it’s the first time we have video from it.
Cronenberg talks about Rob and Twilight at 2:50
David Cronenberg Speaks About Robert Pattinson and Cosmopolis at Q & A At the Lincoln Center 1 comment
Here’s a video of David Cronenberg from the Q&A at the Lincoln Center where he speaks about Robert Pattinson and Cosmopolis.
Larger B&W Photos of Robert Pattinson in Cannes 1 comment
David Cronenberg talks about Robert Pattinson with Oregon Live & IFC 1 comment
From Oregon Live (click to read the full interview)
Given the heavy New York atmosphere of the film, it’s something of a surprise that Cronenberg should have chosen the British actor Robert Pattinson for the lead role. Pattison is best known, of course, for the relatively featherweight demands of the “Twilight” films, which reveal little of the heavy, internal and intellectual stuff that “Cosmopolis” demands. After declaring that “casting is a black art: there’s no rule book to guide you,” Cronenberg explains that he watched some of Pattinson’s non-“Twilight” work, especially “Little Ashes,” in which he played the young Salvador Dalí, and felt he’d found his man. Still, he admits, there is, in all such matters, a leap of faith.
“It’s just intuiting that he can do the role,” he says. “Because you’re asking him here to do things he hasn’t done before. But I was convinced by the time that I had done all my work that he was the right guy. I knew he was good, and he surprised me by how good he was.”
*VIDEO* NEW Robert Pattinson and David Cronenberg Interview with Screenslam 2 comments
From Screenslam
Robert Pattinson stars in director David Cronenberg‘s adaptation of the 2003 Don DeLillonovel, Cosmopolis. The story of Eric Packer (Pattinson), a 28 year-old finance golden boy dreaming of living in a civilization ahead of this one. Riding across Manhattan in a stretch limo in order to get a haircut, his day devolves into an odyssey with a cast of characters that start to tear his world apart. Screenslam sat down with the director and star who spoke about the atmosphere on set, Robert as Eric Packer and why Robert took the role.
On the atmosphere on set:
“I’ve never really worked on something where a director has ultimate control, it looked like very little people were questioning decisions, where as my experience on every film set I’ve ever had is just an unending series of everyone questioning the director, everyone questioning everything about everything and with this there was a very confidant atmosphere on set.” – Robert Pattinson
On Robert as Eric Packer:
“I could tell that he (Pattinson) knew it was good and that he wanted to do it, but he was afraid of it afraid of it in the way actors are often afraid really, which is they don’t want to the one to screw it up because of they weren’t good enough or they’ll be on set and they’ll realize that they don’t understand it and cant deliver it the way they want, but in Rob’s case he was the one.” – David Cronenberg
David Cronenberg talks Cosmopolis, casting Robert Pattinson, chemistry and more with About.com 1 comment
As Eric, Pattinson is in every scene of the film, portraying a character unlike any he’s tackled before. And in our exclusive interview in support of Cosmopolis’ theatrical release by eONE Films, writer/director Cronenberg explained why Pattinson was right for the part of Eric and how he went about tackling the adaptation of DeLillo’s novel.
In casting Robert Pattinson, it’s kind of a double-edge sword, isn’t it? You have hisTwilight fans anxious to support him in whatever he chooses to do and then you have the people who dismiss him because he is ‘that guy from Twilight‘.
“Yeah. In a weird way, on the one hand of course I’m completely aware of all of those elements and also of course when you’re making a movie that for an independent movie was relatively expensive, you have to have a leading character who is very charismatic and who can carry the weight and has the star quality and so on, because you’re going to be looking at him. He’s literally in every scene in the movie, and that’s pretty unusual. I mean even in Tom Cruise movies, Tom is not in absolutely every scene of the movie – but Rob is. So he has to have that. But at the same time, you want to forget the movies, you know? You want to forget his movies and my movies because we’re creating this completely new thing and you don’t know what audience you’re going to get. You can anticipate it, you can think about it, but really you don’t know. So ultimately when you’re making the movie you’re saying, ‘Okay, I’m here with these actors. They’re wonderful actors, I cast them because they’re terrific and they will bring great stuff to the script,’ and then at that point you’re just making a movie and you’re not thinking about any other movie.”
Needing an actor to carry the film by being in every scene, how did you figure out Robert Pattinson was the right guy to play Eric?
[Laughing] “Well, this is the magic of casting! I think as a director, it’s part of your job. It’s a really important part of your job. I think a lot of people don’t even realize that the director’s involved in casting. Some people say, ‘Did you choose your actors?,’ and I say, ‘Yes. You’re not a director if you don’t.'”
“Of course, you’re juggling many things, like I say. You’re juggling, for example, their passports. This is a Canada / France co-production and we were limited to one American actor. Most people of course don’t know that – nor should they. Paul Giamatti is the only American in this movie even though it takes place in New York City. So from that kind of aspect to just finding the right guy…of course he’s got to be the right age, there are a lot of things that are just basic. And then after that, though, there are no rules. You as a director just have to intuit that this actor will be able to carry off this role.”
“We often talk about chemistry, for example, in movies between actors, let’s say. When I was doing A Dangerous Method, Keira Knightley and Michael Fassbender – how do I know they have chemistry together because I had never seen them in a movie together? They’ve never been in one; they’ve never met each other. I don’t see them together until I’m actually directing them, so I have to be this kind of dating master who can anticipate that this couple will be good together. It’s a strange kind of thing. So you give yourself credit when it works, and you have to berate yourself when somehow it hasn’t worked. That’s basically where you’re left.”
It strikes me with Cosmopolis that the chemistry actually needed to come between you and Robert more so than between Rob and any of his co-stars.
“There’s truth in that too. That is the unspoken thing is the chemistry between the director and the actors is the key. And at a certain point I think Rob would…you know, he’s a serious actor and he didn’t want to be the one who was going to blow this movie. He was kind of thinking, ‘Well, I’ll be alone in that limo because I won’t have one person who is always playing opposite me. It’s really a one-man show with a lot of day players coming in.’ And I said, ‘No, you won’t be alone because I’ll be there. I’ll be with you every moment.’ And so that is a real element.”
Do you think that you view the character of Eric the same way that author DeLillo did? Or do you think that you two don’t necessarily agree on how an audience should look at him?
“I think we actually illuminate things for each other. I’ve been on the road doing publicity with Don in several countries and I think he was pretty intrigued by seeing what would happen. Because, after all, once you put Rob Pattinson in that role, that’s a very specific thing. You’ve got a particular face and a particular voice and a body, and that’s something that the novel can not have. That’s one of the things that movies can do that novels can not do, and so it immediately shapes the character in a way that he wasn’t shaped in the novel. So, there are differences, I think, but it’s not a major split or divergence. It’s just really shading and shaping things. It’s just really hearing the dialogue spoken, which was something that when I read the novel, I thought, ‘Yeah, I really want to hear this spoken by really great actors.’ Just doing that immediately changes your reaction to the characters and to the words. So there is a difference, definitely.”
Read more over at about.com | via Gossip Dance
Thinking of Rob 