The Peanuts Movie

THE PEANUTS MOVIE (2015)

Featuring the voices of Noah Schnapp, Hadley Belle Miller, Alexander Garfin, Mariel Sheets, A.J. Tecce, Bill Melendez, Francesca Lily Capaldi, Venus Schultheis, Rebecca Bloom, Noah Johnston, Marleik Mar Mar Walker, Madisyn Shipman, William Wunsch, Anastasia Bredikhina and Kristin Chenoweth.

Screenplay by Craig Schulz & Bryan Schulz and Cornelius Uliano.

Directed by Steve Martino.

Distributed by 20th Century Fox.  89 minutes.  Rated G.

I’m not going to lie.  The idea of a computer animated Peanuts Movie worried me.  Charlie Brown and the gang are classic remnants of another age, and they should be hand drawn.

Charlie Brown was the everyman loser for decades of American kids, an endlessly relatable smart, shy, sort of funny looking optimist who has the football pulled away from him – literally – every time he was just about to succeed.

From daily newspapers to books to beloved TV specials, the Peanuts gang helped two or three generations grow into adulthood, a wise, funny and good-hearted exploration (and explanation) of an all-too-commonly unfair world.

Are they just going to turn it into yet another computer-generated one-size-fits-all kid flick?

And the truth is, it takes a few minutes to get used to these iconic characters as just another example of Pixar-ish computer code.  Linus’ hair was particularly hard to get used to – what the heck is going on with that?  It looks like he has a tentacled space monster on his head.

However, soon enough the real surprise of The Peanuts Movie reveals itself.  It’s not just some cynical cash grab exploiting iconic characters and trying to foist them upon a new generation.  No, it is a true labor of love, a celebration of all that is good and pure about the original strip.

There is no real story here per se, but Peanuts was never really about the story.  It has always worked best as a loosely-connected series of moments and events, and The Peanuts Movie is sort of like a collection of the comic’s greatest hits.

They are mostly here: Lucy with the football, the kite-eating tree, “Curse you Red Baron!,” Linus’ blanket, “The Doctor is In,” naturally curly hair, You blockhead!, Pig-Pen’s cloud of dust, The Great Pumpkin, dog germs, “It was a dark and stormy night,” the adults that speak like wah wah wah.

Yet, The Peanuts Movie is not simply a rote medley of favorite comic strip moments, it holds together as a loose and funny film.  It also reminds us in force what a truly brilliant comic character Snoopy is.

And while the film’s final act slightly overdoes it with the inspirational “You’re a good man, Charlie Brown” speeches, The Peanuts Movie does handily succeed in updating these characters for a new generation and a new millennium.  The film also avoids the snarkiness and mean-spiritedness that infects all too much of today’s children’s entertainment.

This isn’t the first Peanuts movie – there was A Boy Named Charlie Brown, Snoopy Come Home, You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown and more.  But I will go so far to say that this may be the best one, which is rather shocking.  (The classic TV specials A Charlie Brown Christmas and It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown still remain the high-water marks for the series, though.)

Before he died in 2000, Charles Schulz said that he did not want the Peanuts world to continue without him, because he was concerned that the money men would put profit before quality, destroying the strip’s hard-won reputation at the same time that they briefly padded their bottom line.

Well, 20th Century Fox and Blue Sky Studios went out and proved that prediction wrong.  With a script co-written by Schulz’s son and grandson, with famous fans like Paul Feig behind the scenes, The Peanuts Movie is a celebration of everything that made the strip beloved.

While I still would have preferred for the film to have been hand animated, I guess that is a reality of the film world today.  There were a few brief hand-drawn moments that were fun for the nostalgic fans.  Also, I have to admit, some of the computer generated scenes – particularly the Snoopy vs. the Red Baron scenes, were pretty stunning looking, as exciting as some of the biggest action films on film.

Charles Schulz would have heartily approved of The Peanuts Movie, and that is high praise indeed.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: November 4, 2015.

Burnt

BURNT (2015)

Starring Bradley Cooper, Sienna Miller, Omar Sy, Daniel Bruhl, Riccardo Scamarcio, Sam Keeley, Alicia Vikander, Matthew Rhys, Uma Thurman, Emma Thompson, Lily James, Sarah Greene, Henry Goodman, Stephen Campbell Moore, Lexie Benbow-Hart, Bo Bene, Elisa Lasowski and Julian Firth.

Screenplay by Steven Knight.

Directed by John Wells.

Distributed by The Weinstein Company.  100 minutes.  Rated R.

The rock-star deification of chefs has been an interesting, somewhat surprising development over the past few decades.  Suddenly it is hugely desirable to find a man who can put together dishes with very small portions, but ones that look lovely, lightly grilled and covered with a black truffle Balsamic glaze on a bed of whole grain risotto.

People binge-watch the Food Network and Hell’s Kitchen, drooling over both the recipes and the chefs’ bad behavior.  Selfish and abrasive seem to be job requirements.  The chefs with inflated senses of narcissistic self-importance worthy of a brain surgeon have become some of the “love-to-hate” favorites of a new world numbed by reality television and Donald Trump.

Adam Jones, the falling chef in the charming but somewhat underdone dramatic comedy Burnt, can check off all of the boxes of a rock-star chef’s most important traits.  Fired in disgrace from his last job?  Check.  Thoughtless, impatient and often cruel to his workers?  Check.  Obsessed with his own menu, to the detriment of anything else in his life?  Check.  A large series of wrecked relationships (work, friendship and romantic) smoldering in his wake?  Check.  Secretly extremely neurotic?  Check.  Recovering from a substance abuse problem?  Check.  Snarky to the extreme?  Check.  Determined to have one last chance to be the shining star of culinary arts?  Check.  Willing and able to do anything, including murder, just to get a three-star review in The Michelin Guide.  Check.

Bradley Cooper had played essentially this same role several years ago – in a much more blatantly comic manner – when he played a fictionalized version of celeb chef Anthony Bourdain in FOX’s short-lived and underrated comedy Kitchen Confidential.

However, his natural charm and charisma saves the character of Jones from becoming a massively unlikable jerk – though the script occasionally conspired against his character reclamation.  We meet Jones when he is at a low ebb, having been fired from his last job in Paris, having lost his staff and being looked at as a has-been in the gourmet world.  In the meantime, his old partner has opened one of the hottest restaurants in London.  Jones has cleaned himself up from his drug and alcohol usage, given up his womanizing ways and is trying to live life on the straight and narrow with just one goal in sight: To open the next it restaurant.

His opportunity comes through Tony (Daniel Bruhl), the rich son of a restaurateur who had lost a mint in Adam’s last venture, however Jones takes advantage of the fact that Tony is in love with him (despite the fact that Jones is not gay) and will do pretty much anything he wants.  However, Tony insists that Jones behave or he will pull the plug and put together his old kitchen staff, adding a new sous chef Helene (Sienna Miller), a young single mother who despises Jones’ self-absorbed charm from the beginning, but eventually comes to respect the artist in his soul.

Burnt has some fine moments and some lovely acting, and the final scene is wonderfully understated and subtle.  It’s all filmed beautifully, and the food looks smashing, but eventually how much you like Burnt will come down to how much you are invested in whether a selfish man can find his personal salvation though a three-star review.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: October 29, 2015.

Ant-Man

ANT-MAN (2015)

Starring Paul Rudd, Michael Douglas, Corey Stoll, Evangeline Lilly, Michael Peña, Bobby Cannavale, Judy Greer, Anthony Mackie, Tip “T.I.” Harris, Wood Harris, David Dastmalchian, Abby Ryder Fortson, Martin Donovan, Hayley Atwell, John Slattery, Garrett Morris, Gregg Turkington, Jean Louisa Kelly, Chris Evans, Sebastian Stan and Stan Lee.

Screenplay by Edgar Wright & Joe Cornish and Adam McKay & Paul Rudd.

Directed by Peyton Reed.

Distributed by Walt Disney Pictures.  117 minutes.  Rated PG-13.

The Marvel Comics film universe is huge, but it has been expanding so quickly that eventually it was inevitable that they would run out of the A-list heroes.  Most of the classic names are already out there, for better or worse – Spiderman, Thor, Captain America, The Incredible Hulk, The Fantastic Four, Iron Man, The X-Men – leaving the studio to ponder how to keep the movies going organically.

That is probably why in the past year Marvel has been delving into some of their more quirky niche characters.  First came Guardians of the Galaxy, a comic book team which had completely slipped under the radar of all but the most fanatical of fan-boys.  Now comes Ant-Man, a character who is less obscure than the Guardians, but still is far from most people’s go-to superhero.

However Ant-Man’s main super-power is one that people have been imagining for generations – the ability to shrink to the size of an ant.  This basic idea has been toyed with many times in Hollywood, such as The Incredible Shrinking Man, Fantastic Voyage, and the Honey I Shrunk The Kids! movies.

His other power – the ability to mentally control armies of hundreds and thousands of ants – is a little more ridiculous looking cinematically, but overall Ant-Man is one of the better recent Marvel projects, certainly better than the overrated Guardians.  And it’s nice that for a change a Marvel movie does not climax with a giant flying ship crashing to the Earth.

In fact, in most ways Ant-Man is more down to Earth than the other Marvel films, a more modest story and thrills, and the film is likeably slapdash due to this… uhhh… smaller scale.

Also unlike most Marvel superheroes, who tend to be lovable misfit teenagers, brooding misfit scientists, wisecracking misfit tycoons and athletes, honorable misfit soldiers, or whatever, Ant-Man starts his origin story on the other side as an actual criminal.  (Though, of course, a lovable misfit one.)  As the film starts, Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) is getting out of San Quentin for a three year stint for cat burglary.

He falls in with his old gang, the incredibly good-natured Luis (a scene-stealing Michael Peña) and co-horts (Tip “T.I.” Harris and David Dastmalchian).  They expect for Scott to slip right back into his criminal ways, but Scott is determined to stay on the straight and narrow for his adorable moppet of a daughter, Cassie (Abby Ryder Fortson), who his ex-wife (Judy Greer) is dragging her feet on letting him see.  To add insult to injury, his ex is now living with a cop (Bobby Cannavale) who helped to put him away in the first place.

Scott quickly realizes that it’s tough out there for a gangsta, even getting shot down for minimum wage jobs because of his record.  So at his lowest point, he agrees to do one last big job, breaking into the safe of Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), the founder of a multi-national scientific conglomerate.  However, when he finally gets in to the huge old safe, all that is in there is a mysterious old costume, which he takes so that it won’t be a complete waste.

What Scott didn’t know was that the whole crime was a set-up.  Dr. Pym wanted to take the suit, which he had created 50 years earlier and had the power to shrink the wearer to the size of an ant, while giving him super power and super speed, just like ants themselves have, in comparison to their size.  Dr. Pym had been Ant-Man years earlier, but eventually realized that the suit was too dangerous to get in the wrong hands, so he never shared its secrets.  Now his former protégée, who ended up stealing his company, was on his way to unlocking the secrets, so Dr. Pym needed someone to make sure that did not happen.

His daughter (Evangeline Lilly in a bob cut) wanted to take over wearing the suit, but Dr. Pym insisted on teaching Scott, leading to the normal trial and error period as he learned how to use his newfound powers.  This leads to some fun and interesting special effects sequences, like a fight on top of a train which turns out to be a Thomas the Tank Engine toy, as well as some wonderfully amusing cutbacks where these wild fights are shown from the perspective of our own size.

It leads to the most purely fun and easily accessible Marvel film since the first Iron Man.  It’s nice to know that the creators of Marvel world realize that not everything has to be end of the world heroics.  Sometimes it’s fun for the heroes to just relax and have a little adventure.

Dave Strohler

Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: November 27, 2015.

GIRLFRIENDS’ GUIDE TO DIVORCE — Season:2 — Pictured: Necar Zadegan as Delia — (Photo by: Andrew Eccles/Bravo)

Necar Zadegan

Girlfriend’s Guide to TV Stardom

by Landyn Gerace

The drama is back in Bravo’s first scripted series, Girlfriend’s Guide to Divorce. The show returns for its second season Tuesday, December 1 and the leading ladies aren’t holding back.

With four female leads (Lisa Edelstein, Beau Garrett, Necar Zadegan and Alanna Ubach), the writer of the series being a woman (Marti Noxon), and women directors throughout the episodes, it’s clear the show heavily emphasizes the life of real women in today’s world.

GIRLFRIENDS’ GUIDE TO DIVORCE — “Rule #72: It’s Never Too Late To Be A Mean Girl” Episode 205 — Pictured: (l-r) Retta as Barbara, Lisa Edelstein as Abby, Alanna Ubach as Jo, Necar Zadegan as Delia, Beau Garrett as Phoebe– (Photo by: Dean Buscher/Bravo)

“We are a very large part of the population, woman with careers. I feel lucky that I get to be a part of it and I’ve always been so interested in my role,” says Zadegan who plays Delia, a self-made divorce attorney.

Between marriage, work, and children, the character’s lives of the hit series revolve heavily around relationships and love. As do the lives of most people.

“I think love is the biggest mystery of life. Love is one of those things you never get too old for…. Your heart never grows old and our show is about love. I think moreover relationships are hard. We explore all that stuff,” says Zadegan.

Whether you are 18 or 45, dating is a very real part of life and every character of the show explores the emotional roller coaster that comes with those relationships. In particular, the women of the show have more than just themselves to consider when it comes to their love lives. Between children, careers, and close friends, Zadegan explains how it is important for them all to obtain healthy relationships – not only with your significant other, but your friends as well.

THE GIRLFRIENDS GUIDE TO DIVORCE — Season:1 — Pictured: Necar Zadegan as Delia — (Photo by: Andrew Eccles/Bravo)

“This is your life, your life isn’t just work…. It’s about love in so many ways. Not just who you are dating. You have to make time for people,” Zadegan says.

“This show is [about] relationships and the viewers can really have an opinion about it. Everybody thinks they know about relationships,” she added.

Not only do the characters enjoy spending time with each other as best friends on camera, but they enjoy each other’s company behind the scenes as well.

“I love the girls I work with. They have become some of my favorite actresses and we really have a good time working with one another. We all love the show so much and work hard to tell the story,” she says on her co-stars. “It’s wonderful to work with like-minded women.”

GIRLFRIENDS’ GUIDE TO DIVORCE — “Rule #77: Don’t Blow the Bubble” Episode 202 — Pictured: Necar Zadegan as Delia — (Photo by: Diyah Perah/Bravo)

At the end of last season, the audience watches the previously commitment-phobic Delia became more open to the traditional idea of marriage as she becomes engaged to a previous client.

Growing up with her parents not together and looking after her father, Delia has grown to be an independent woman who has never had to rely on anyone other than herself and she takes pride in that.

“Nobody helped her to get where she is. In the face of adversity, she made a beautiful life for herself. She wrestles with the question of marriage. It creates a lot inner turmoil for her because she has come this far on her own,” says Zadegan.

With the season two premiere finally here, fans can expect to the show to pick up right where it left off. Zadegan explains that last season, the girls were learning to put their past behind them and making the choice to start fresh. Now they are quickly learning that if you don’t deal with your past, it will still find you.

GIRLFRIENDS’ GUIDE TO DIVORCE — %u201CRule #67: Don%u2019t Kill The Princess%u201D Episode 107 — Pictured: Necar Zadegan as Delia — (Photo by: Sergei Bachlakov/Bravo)

“You can almost call this season the great cover-up,” Zadegan jokes. “They’re trying to cover up things they don’t want to deal with.”

From the characters’ personalities to the overall plot, Girlfriend’s Guide to Divorce is a show people of all ages and different generations can relate to and Necar Zadegan believes that is a large reason why so many people enjoy watching.

“Every time you start a new project you believe in it very strongly. I love the show that we were doing.”

Season two of Girlfriend’s Guide to Divorce premieres December 1 10/9c on Bravo.

Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: November 25, 2015.

Photos ©2014-2015 Courtesy of Bravo. All rights reserved.

On November 14 2015, PopEntertainment’s Roula, Sami and Ali attended the Nickelodeon Halo Awards red (orange) carpet in New York City! Hosted by Nick Cannon, it is a great event highlighting teens who give back to their community. Catch the awards on television November 29th, 2015! Photos courtesy of Getty images and Roula Khaldi of Popentertainment.com. Video Edited by Sami Speiss of Popentertainment.com.

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Ted 2

TED 2 (2015)

Starring Mark Wahlberg, Amanda Seyfried, Jessica Barth, Sam J. Jones, Giovanni Ribisi, Morgan Freeman, Patrick Warburton, Michael Dorn, John Carroll Lynch, John Slattery, Liam Neeson, Dennis Haysbert, Bill Smitrovich, Jessica Szohr, Lenny Clarke, Tom Brady, Jay Leno, Kate McKinnon, Bobby Moynihan, Taran Killam, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Bill Maher, Curtis Stigers, Tiffany and the voices of Seth MacFarlane and Patrick Stewart.

Screenplay by Seth MacFarlane, Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild.

Directed by Seth MacFarlane.

Distributed by Universal Pictures.  115 minutes.  Rated R.

Remember how a few years ago the first Ted film had us all believing that Seth MacFarlane could be a new, exciting, offbeat voice in film comedy?

Yeah, well forget it.

The best thing I can say about Ted 2 is that it’s a better than A Million Ways To Die in the West, the film that MacFarlane let loose on the world between his two dirty-talking teddy bear films.  Still, it doesn’t even come close to remembering what made the original Ted come to life – and that film also eventually lost its way about an hour into the film.

However, even if that first film flew off the tracks with the ridiculous subplot about a deranged fan trying to kidnap Ted and make him his own (and for some reason, that stupid storyline is extended into this sequel as well), for the first 2/3s of the film, Ted was debauched and funny.  Did it go too far sometimes?  Hell, yes!  (The prostitute poo joke comes immediately to mind…)  But Ted had a wild, devil-may-care brashness.  It was proudly stupid and proudly profane and there was just something weirdly satisfying about a movie about a cuddly toy who was a drinker, drug addict, sex-obsessed, fought, cursed like a sailor and was an overall menace to society.

We didn’t care about Ted’s deep inner feelings because he had no real depth, or at least none that he wasn’t willing to overwhelm with alcohol and fart jokes.

So whose brilliant idea was it to try to turn Ted 2 into a new, touchy-feely version of the bear?

Note to MacFarlane: The world really has a lot more vital human rights violations to worry about than to get hung up on the idea that a walking, talking, partying plush toy is not being legally recognized as a human being.

No matter how much MacFarlane tries to ham-handedly equate his story with the gay rights movement or racial inequality, the audience can’t help but kind of agree when a defense attorney asks the simple question: “Does your dog deserves human rights?  Your cat?”

It’s not that bad a point.  Ted is simply not a human.  That doesn’t mean people don’t love him.

Now don’t get me wrong.  Ted is still a very funny character and MacFarlane still allows him some profanely witty lines and off-the-charts anti-social behavior.  However, this time around Ted spends entirely too much time gazing at his navel, talking about feelings, injustices, understanding and true love.

All of those things are just fine for a different character.  But that is so not the Ted we got to know in the first film.  And I’m not sure that anyone really signed up for Ted 2 thinking they would get to see a child’s toy having a dark night of the soul.

Joining him in his little mopey party is his best friend John (Mark Wahlberg), although at least his character showed those kind of tendencies the first time around.  Somewhere along the way he was dumped by Mila Kunis’ character from the first film – for reasons which were left vague, though the guys seemed to be placing all the blame on her.  That is somewhat amusing since it always seemed that she could do a hell of a lot better than that man-boy, but okay, I get it, John and Ted are thunder buddies, so they are going to take his side.

In the meantime, Ted has married his beloved Tami-Lynn.  (The wedding is an oddball Busby Berkeley pastiche during the opening credits, leading you to wonder how many Ted 2 fans will be up on that long-dead musical director’s body of work, films such as Gold Diggers of 1933, 42nd Street and Footlight Parade.)  Jessica Barth is still one of Ted‘s secret weapons as the proudly trashy Tami-Lynn, though like her husband she is given much less of interest to do in this film, mostly just pledge her love and melt at the idea of having a baby.

Of course, when you are married to a teddy bear, that can be a problem.  Particularly since, as they dance around slightly, Ted has no genitals.  So they consider artificial insemination (leading to an inevitable, yet disappointing scene where Ted and John mistakenly knock down a shelf full of semen samples), and when that doesn’t work, they decide to apply for an adaption.

Which sets the tortured storyline.  When the courts realize that a walking talking teddy bear is trying to adopt a kid, it puts him on the government radar.  He is determined not to be a human being (he is referred to as a possession in a particularly tortured slavery reference) and thus he is not able to hold a job, be married or have a child.  Ted and John decide to fight it in court, finding Samantha (Amanda Seyfried is completely wasted in the role, much like she was in MacFarlane’s A Million Ways to Die in the West), a good-hearted, pot-smoking lawyer who quickly jolts John out of his post-divorce anti-dating funk as well as fighting for Ted’s rights to be human.  Even though he’s really not.

In the meantime, for some reason they brought back Giovanni Ribisi’s character of Donny – the guy who knocked the first film off its sure footing – and have him try to kidnap Ted yet again.  Just staging it at New York’s Comic-Con and surrounding the big chase scene and fight with cosplay monsters doesn’t make that idea any less interesting.

There are enough glimmers of the humor from the first film to make Ted 2 not be a complete waste of time, but it is certainly a letdown after its predecessor.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: December 15, 2015.

Sleeping With Other People

SLEEPING WITH OTHER PEOPLE (2015)

Starring Alison Brie, Jason Sudeikis, Amanda Peet, Adam Scott, Adam Brody, Katherine Waterston, Jason Mantzoukas, Andrea Savage, Jordan Carlos, Margarita Levieva, Remy Nozik and Natasha Lyonne.

Screenplay by Leslye Headland.

Directed by Leslye Headland.

Distributed by IFC Films.  95 minutes.  Rated R.

Romantic comedies have been going through a bit of a dry streak for the last… oh, decade or so… so you always want for one to hit that sweet spot.  Sleeping With Other People has a smart, hip and likable cast, including an adorable couple of leads – Jason Sudeikis of Saturday Night Live and Alison Brie of Community – as well as some spectacular Manhattan settings.  It has smart people with cool jobs talking about substantive things (well, at least sometimes).  Sleeping With Other People even goes back to one of the all-time greats for inspiration – it’s When Harry Met Sally with text messaging – though sadly, it is not even close to as good as that classic.

You know the basic storyline even as it is playing out.  Jake (Sudeikis) and Lainey (Brie) meet cute in a college flashback (though both Brie and particularly Sudeikis look way too old to be in college), losing their virginity to each other and then promptly losing touch.

Thirteen years later, both are living in Manhattan and run into each other at a sex addicts support group.  However, neither is really a sex addict, they are just serially afraid of commitments.  Jake has been bedding a series of women through the years, sabotaging their relationships when things become too serious.  Lainey has been involved in a long-standing adulterous relationship with an old college crush (his standing her up back in the flashback led to Jake and Lainey’s one night of ecstacy) who is engaged to marry another woman.

Both recognize that they on bad courses in life and need some serious changes.  Therefore they decide that because their sexual relationships always end up hurting them and others, they will try to be just friends.  But can men and women really have a relationship without sex and love getting in the way?

Sleeping With Other People even steals one of When Harry Met Sally‘s lines on the subject – “Men and women can’t be just friends” – though it is a woman who says the line this time around.  I guess that’s sort of progress.

Of course everyone in each of their lives recognizes that they are actually the perfect couple, but they refuse to pull the trigger, fearing that sex will just complicate things and eventually wreck their relationship.  So they tell each other about their dates, have a safe word for when the other is doing something to make them sexually aroused, and go to friends’ kids parties when high.

Sudeikis and particularly Brie are extremely likable presences, and do inspire the audience to root for Jake and Lainey to end up together, even when they are being idiots.

In fairness to writer/director Leslye Headland (Bridesmaids), she appears to be sincerely trying to play with romantic comedy clichés, taking post-modern winks at the formula.  Unfortunately, despite this slight distance, she still ends up falling into many of those very same storytelling clichés.  Doing it with ironic detachment does not change the fact that is has been done.

However, for all its occasional silliness and over-reliance on formula, this is a rather likable film.

Sleeping With Other People is far from a great movie, but it’s actually surprisingly a decent bit better than most rom-coms that come down the pike.  I’m not sure whether that is a statement about the quality of Sleeping With Other People or if it is a statement about the quality of other romantic comedies, but I’ll take it.  If you’re looking for a pretty good rom-com, you could do a hell of a lot worse than Sleeping With Other People.

Dave Strohler

Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: December 27, 2015.

Mistress America

MISTRESS AMERICA (2015)

Starring Lola Kirke, Greta Gerwig, Heather Lind, Cindy Cheung, Jasmine Cephas, Matthew Shear, Kathryn Erbe, Michael Chernus, Dean Wareham, Shelby Rebecca Wong and Adrea Teasdale.

Screenplay by Noah Baumbach & Greta Gerwig.

Directed by Noah Baumbach.

Distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures.  84 minutes.  Rated R.

Director Noah Baumbach is having a busy New York year.  This is the second Manhattan-based film featuring the co-stars of his way-underrated 2010 life-in-Los-Angeles film Greenberg which came out within a matter of weeks of each other this past summer.  I caught While We’re Young with Ben Stiller in its theatrical go-around, but I somehow missed Greta Gerwig’s flip side of the coin until its video release.

At the time of Greenberg, Gerwig was a little known mumblecore indie actress, and while the film itself was not a huge success, her spectacularly neurotic performance caught the eyes of Hollywood execs.  (This is as well as catching the eye of her director, Baumbach left his wife Jennifer Jason Leigh – who was also in Greenberg – and became involved with Gerwig.)

In Gerwig, Baumbach has found his perfect female heroine (on film, we will not comment any further on their personal relationship).  Beyond Greenberg, Baumbach is also known for smart, funny films like The Squid & the Whale and Margot at the Wedding and Gerwig fits in with his skewed worldview perfectly, even in a flawed movie like their other collaboration Frances Ha.

Gerwig has a sublime mixture of understated cool and neurotic zaniness – an unholy merge of Veronica Lake and Carole Lombard – and yet her style is weirdly inimitable.  In Mistress America, which Gerwig wrote with Baumbach, she has also found what may be her ideal character.

In an act of screenwriting generosity, Gerwig has made her character a supporting role – granted, a very significant supporting role – and gave the lead in their film to another young actress.

That actress is Lola Kirke, and she is more than up to the challenge.  Though her character of Tracy in some ways becomes the straight man to Gerwig’s Brooke in much of the film, she also brings a fascinating vulnerability and surprising depth to what could be a simple unpopular college girl role.

In Mistress America, Tracy has moved to New York to go to college to become a writer, but barely into her freshman year she is already feeling lost and like a bit of an outcast.  She’s having trouble making friends, not doing great in her classes and already considering giving up on her New York dream.  The one friend she has made is Tony (Matthew Shear), a nerdy guy who she is planning on stringing along as a potential fallback boyfriend, until she is shocked that he picks up a girlfriend without even coming on to her.

Tracy also feels a bit detached from the remarriage of her divorced mom back home (Kathryn Erbe).  However, her new father-in-law, who mom had met on the internet and Tracy has not yet met, has a daughter in New York as well.  That daughter is Brooke, who is about a decade older than Tracy, but has put together a cool New York existence, or so it seems from the outside.

Tracy resists her mom’s suggestions that she reach out to Brooke for a while, but one night when she is feeling particularly low and unpopular she decides to meet the woman who will become her sister-in-law.  Brooke takes Tracy for a whirlwind tour of Manhattan’s hip and fun areas, and soon Tracy is intrigued by the woman, a wild mix of gorgeous surety and neurotic self-doubt.  Brooke is living a crazed new-millennial hipster version of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and Tracy is seduced by her world, and also finds her an inspiration as a writer.

However, the more that Tracy finds confidence through her relationship with Brooke, the more she loses track of her basic humanity.  As she sees Brooke’s plans and schemes start to crumble, Tracy adds to her chaos by writing a not-very-complimentary story “based on” Brooke.

Mistress America has some astonishingly good comic set pieces – an extended sequence in which Brooke and Tracy visit an old frenemy of Brooke’s in search of money is a marvel of sustained screwball comedy – and it also is smart enough to give the characters real feelings and problems.

It may not be quite as popular as While We’re Young – which has a much flashier cast – but this film is by no means the lesser of Baumbach’s New York double feature.  That film was very good, but Mistress America can make a very good argument for being the top of this bill.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2015 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: December 15, 2015.

The Big Short

THE BIG SHORT (2015)

Starring Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Christian Bale, Brad Pitt, Marisa Tomei, Hamish Linklater, Rafe Spall, Jeremy Strong, Adepero Oduye, Karen Gillan, Max Greenfield, Billy Magnussen, Melissa Leo, John Magaro, Finn Wittrock, Byron Mann, Margot Robbie, Anthony Bourdain, Richard Thaler and Selena Gomez.

Screenplay by Charles Randolph and Adam McKay.

Directed by Adam McKay.

Distributed by Paramount Pictures.  130 minutes.  Rated R.

Forget about vampires, ghosts, mad slashers and other assorted bogeymen.  The Big Short is by far the scariest film you are going to see this year.  And it’s all the more scary because it’s a true story.  One that affects every single person in the United States, and for that matter on the Earth.  Also, honestly, it’s a story that the great majority of people don’t really understand.

The Big Short is being sold as a comedy, and in some ways it is extremely funny.  Also, in some ways it does overdo some of the cartoonish aspects of its characters.  But don’t fool yourself, just because this film is written and directed by Adam McKay – who is best known for making dumb movies with Will Ferrell like Anchorman and Talladega Nights – that doesn’t mean that The Big Short has no teeth.  The Big Short would stand tall in the company of some of the great celluloid social satires – like Dr. Strangelove, Trading Places, The Wolf of Wall Street, Thank You For Smoking or In the Loop – if not for the fact that… again, this is a true story.  (Of course, The Wolf of Wall Street and Thank You For Smoking were based on true stories, too.)

Based on Michael Lewis’ book The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, this movie is about the 2008 financial crisis which had the world economy teetering on the brink of global collapse, a fate that we have not nearly escaped though it appears for now we have all dodged a bullet.

Of course, it goes without saying that all of the financial details which led to the collapse are highly complex – often intentionally complex – not the kind of thing that an average matinee patron is likely to know.  McKay uses a few techniques to give simple thumbnail explanations of concepts like “synthetic collateralized debt obligation” and “credit-default swaps,” either with voiceover explanations, definitions printed briefly on screen or having celebrities (Margot Robbie, Anthony Bourdain, Selena Gomez) give brief detailed layman explanations of the concept.

So right off the bat, McKay has set himself up with an extraordinarily difficult task – to make an enjoyable comedy drama on an arcane subject most people don’t get and frankly are extremely confused by even when someone does explain it.  Due to this immediate narrative problem, McKay has a tendency to play up some of the eccentricities of his characters to make the film more palatable to an audience.

There are many characters here, but the main ones are as follow:

Dr. Michael Burry (Christian Bale), a socially inept, one-eyed numbers savant who listens to Mastodon while working out the fact that a huge amount of banks using bad mortgages for credit will inevitably lead to a housing bubble – and he has a way to exploit it for his own wealth.

Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling), a greasy banker who hears about Burry’s discover and realizes that he is correct, so he starts fishing for traders to buying bonds which will essentially bet against the mortgages, and which become valuable only if they widely fail.

In his search, he stumbles upon (literally, they meet on a wrong-number call) Mark Baum (Steve Carell), a bond trader with anger-control issues who is sickened by the graft in his industry, but not so much so that he doesn’t eventually realize this can lead to him making a killing, as well as sticking a finger in the eye of big banking.

In the meantime two young traders Charlie Geller (John Magaro) and Jamie Shipley (Finn Wittrock) also stumble onto the scheme, and use a new-agey disgruntled former banker Ben Rickert (Brad Pitt) to get them entree to the halls of power.

(Note: Both Gosling and Carell’s characters are fictional, though Carell’s was supposedly based upon trader Steve Eisman.)

We all know what happened, essentially, though The Big Short makes clear the wanton recklessness and lack of conscience that led to the huge banking collapse.  It also points out again the simple if mostly unexamined truth – most of the people who were responsible for the calamity escaped with golden parachutes and no legal ramifications while the taxpayers paid to bail out their recklessness.

As one of the characters said towards the end: When the economy goes south and no one knows why, they “blame immigrants and poor people.”  Cue Donald Trump and Ted Cruz for their cameos in the sequel.

While some of this stuff is politically polarizing – is it a coincidence that the only really bad review I can find that the film got was in the ultra-conservative New York Post?– I would like to think that we can all agree that what these bankers did was shameful, corrupt and illegal.  Well, all of us except for the crooks who did the stealing.

Which brings to mind probably the biggest flaw with The Big Short.  The film expects us to like the characters in the film.  Mostly we do, even.  However, while they are preferable to the corrupt bankers who set the whole disaster in motion, for the most part they were completely content to get rich exploiting the financial loophole that the greedy banks had created.  Only two of them (Steve Carell and Brad Pitt’s characters) seemed to give a damn that while they were getting rich, millions of people were losing their jobs and their homes due to the very same rotten financial regulations that they were exploiting for profit.

Still, The Big Short is an important film.  We must not forget, because we are on the razor’s edge of it all coming around again.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2016 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: January 9, 2016.

Rob Lowe in You, Me and the Apocalypse

Rob Lowe and Iain Hollands

Rob, Iain and the Apocalypse

by Jay S. Jacobs

What if the end of the world was coming, and it was the best thing to ever happen to you?

That is the premise of British scribe Iain Hollands’ new television series You, Me and the Apocalypse, the story of a motley crew of humans dealing with the announcement of a huge comet due to strike the Earth in 34 days time.

The series (a co-production of the BBC and NBC-TV) takes place all around the world and has an international cast which includes Jenna Fischer (The Office), Megan Mullally (Will & Grace), Mathew Baynton (Yonderland), Gaia Scodellaro (Watch Them Fall), Joel Fry (Game of Thrones), Diana Rigg (The Avengers) and Nick Offerman (Parks and Recreation).

Perhaps the biggest stray from type is having Rob Lowe – handsome star of everything from St. Elmo’s Fire to The West Wing to Wayne’s World to Parks and Recreation – playing a chain-smoking, trash-talking priest.  Lowe, who is also currently starring in the title role of the FOX sitcom The Grinder, plays Father Jude, a troubled man of the cloth in the midst of a crisis of faith who is tasked with the burden of being a “Devil’s advocate” – searching the globe for miracles confirming the coming of the Anti-Christ, as well as keeping his eye out for the second coming of the Lord.

A week before You, Me and the Apocalypse had its US premiere, we were one of small group of media outlets who were invited to talk with Lowe and Hollands about their new show.

You, Me & The Apocalypse

My first reaction is would our leaders be this honest with us if the world were coming to an end? This is an advertisement for not telling us what’s going on. If this were actually happening, what should we do? Maybe being in the dark is a little bit better. Look at how these poor people end up.

Rob Lowe: Iain probably can give the real answer, since he wrote it. But I always thought they absolutely kept people in the dark in the world of the show. Probably for a long time, they knew it was coming. Now when it got to 30 days out, they were like, “You know what? At some point we have to let them know.” I bet you they knew the world was ending for a lot longer than 30 days. But if this any indication, I think ignorance is probably bliss.

Iain Hollands: I agree with Rob. And on a personal note, I would far rather not know than know.

With 30 days left, what would be on your bucket list?

Rob Lowe: I spent a good amount of time thinking about that during the show. There may be a couple of things that you’d consider: I’ve never been to the rain forests, or whatever. [But] When really faced with it, I would want to do exactly what I’m doing, which would be work hard, be with my family and live the life I’m living. It actually makes me feel really good and satisfied about my life. I’m blessed. It’s all good, because I don’t feel like there’s a lot of stuff out there that I would feel like I missed out on if it was all coming to an end.

How did this project come about for you?

Rob Lowe: It was sent to me. The minute I read the first Father Jude scene, I knew I was in. There aren’t many scripts that grab you like this. Iain did such a great job in terms of tone – of it being very, very dramatic and very, very irreverent and witty, all at the same time. The character of Father Jude in particular for me was a standout. Certainly nothing like anything I’d ever played before.

Rob Lowe in You, Me and the Apocalypse

You’ve been acting for years, but this is the first time that I can remember that you played a priest. Obviously, Father Jude is very flawed and has his doubts about things. But as an actor, did you have to find a different headspace to play that character? Did you talk to any priests or anything to get ready for the role?

Rob Lowe: Well, it was a great excuse to do something that I’ve been putting off forever, which was really, really, really spend some time reading the bible cover to cover. I’ve read bits and pieces of it over the course of my life, but I’ve never really sat down and taken it all in, in a scholarly way. That was great, a great opportunity to do that. In terms of playing a priest, for me, it was like: there are certain archetypes that an actor should play before they move on. Cop, check. Cowboy, check. President, check. Priest, check. I’m working my way down the list now.

It’s very rare that an actor gets the chance to have major roles in two big series at the same time. How do you juggle the time between this series and The Grinder? And what’s it like to have both of those going at the same time?

Rob Lowe: It is really exciting. Two completely different characters in two completely different types of shows on two networks at the same time, is really an actor’s dream. I would travel back and forth. I’d do three weeks in Europe on You, Me and the Apocalypse and then I would fly back here and work on The Grinder. To be doing them both at the same time was a challenge, but also really fun. Then we finished Apocalypse in a time where I could then really do the meat of The Grinder, which I’m still doing today. I’m actually on the set. I’m on the set dressed as a Mexican busboy as we speak. (laughs) Don’t ask why The Grinder would be a Mexican busboy. You will find out.

Iain Hollands, creator of You, Me and the Apocalypse

Iain, you created such an incredible batch of colorful characters. Is there one in particular that you really enjoy writing for? And how do you balance them all?

Iain Hollands: Yes, it’s a show with a lot of characters. We spend an awful lot of time trying to structure it in a way which allows everyone to have some fun with their character. I don’t think I have one in particular. It depends on what mood you’re in. Like if you’re in a foul mood, it’s fun to write Leanne (Megan Mullally’s white supremacist jailbird character). If you’re in a pessimistic mood, it’s often to better to write some of the British characters. So I don’t have one in particular. Writing Father Jude was certainly a lot of fun because… on the surface, yes, okay, he swears and he smokes and everything. But what was really interesting was there’s real depth to him. You scratch the surface and he’s a man that really cares, and who has the real courage to take on hypocrisy. Okay, he does it in a really irreverent way, but I love writing somebody that really cared about their faith that much.

Thanks for writing an apocalyptic series that doesn’t have zombies.

Iain Hollands: (laughs) Yes. Yes. Yes. Well, you know that’s series two. No. I’m joking. I’m joking.

Rob, when I saw your character, I thought of Richard Chamberlain in The Thorn Birds.

Rob Lowe: Yes. Sort of… right. Yes, of course. Yes. That’s right. It’s been a while since we had that type of a priest on TV. I’m glad to bring it back.

Iain, is it easy to write for both British and American audiences?

Iain Hollands: Yes. I mean, I don’t think you consciously set out to do that. The only thing you can really do is write something that you would enjoy watching. The fact is now that we watch so much TV over here from America, it’s such a great period, there’s so many great shows around. You kind of pick it up almost by osmosis. So, from that point of view, it wasn’t difficult. It’s like when you’re sitting down and reading through the scripts with American actors. You can tell where you’ve gone wrong with the words they wouldn’t use, or intonation that they wouldn’t do. But generally speaking, I think that British and American audiences have more similarities then they have differences.

Iain, with the show being 30 days until the comet collides with earth, if you get more than one season, how is that timeline going to work? That seems like such a limited amount of time to work with to do with a show like this.

Iain Hollands: I’m trying to think how to answer that without giving anything away. There’s definitely a possibility for it to return. There’s a plan for that to happen. But it’s difficult for me to answer your question without a massive spoiler alert. So just say that the end of the final episode isn’t necessarily the end.

Rob Lowe in You, Me and the Apocalypse

As far as being the devil’s advocate, what kind of scenarios are we going to see you play?

Rob Lowe: Well, as the world unravels, the church teaches that would be not only the time for the savior to return, but also the time for the antichrist to return, if it is indeed the end of the world. When we realize it is the end of the world, you need the devil’s advocate to sort out and find the antichrist, the real one, or the real savior. So he’s a busy man. I think up until the show opens with the announcement of the media, the job of devil’s advocate was probably not as exciting as it sounds. But the minute the apocalypse is on us, all bets are off.

I loved watching you on Parks and Rec playing Chris Traeger, the nicest guy in the world. What’s it been like going from playing a character like that to a devil advocating, foul-mouthed priest?

Rob Lowe: Great is the answer. (Iain laughs) If I could design my career – which we all try to and sometimes you can and sometimes you can’t – it would be going from one extreme to the other with each role. So, this was the perfect tonic for me right after playing Chris, who’s such a beloved character. People love [him] and I loved playing him. But I was definitely ready to exercise my more… what’s the word I’m looking for?… misanthropic muscles.

Megan [Mullally] is on the show as well, who was on Parks and Rec. What do you think of her make-up? She looks completely different.

Rob Lowe: I didn’t recognize her, and I’ve known Megan since 1984. She’s a chameleon. She’s an amazing actress. I think that’s no surprise. Everybody knows what a stunning actress she is. When she was on Will & Grace, people thought that’s who she was. Literally, they thought that was. Then when she was on Parks and Rec as Tammy, she just inhabits those characters. This is no different. I think even Megan Mullally fans when they see her in this at first probably won’t even realize it’s her.

Iain Hollands: Yes. I have to say she was amazing. She was so brave. She was the one that wanted to push it further and further and further. When you first offer a part like that to an actress, you’re always kind of worried that they’re going to want to look amazing. She was the one [who] was like, “No. No. No, I want the teeth. I want the hair. I want the full works.” That was a really bold step for her to make.

Rhonda, Jenna Fischer’s character, with her being in prison, has a Orange is the New Black feel to it. Can you talk a little bit about her character?

Iain Hollands: Jenna Fischer plays Rhonda, who has been wrongly accused of a crime and [is] in prison. She’s a mild-mannered librarian, completely unable to deal with life in prison. Then, weirdly luckily for her, the apocalypse is coming. There’s a huge prison break, in which she manages to get away, which is fantastic news. But unfortunately, she’s lumbered with Leanne, Megan Mullally’s character, who’s the kind of person that she would in normal life cross the road to avoid. Their story is the story of two women desperately trying to get across America to be with their families before the end of the world.

What was it like to get Rob involved?

Iain Hollands: It was absolutely amazing. It was on our wish list. Rob took a real gamble on this, because it’s a bunch of British people that he didn’t know from Adam. He had to come over to Europe to make it. Having him say yes to that, I thought was a really bold move for him.

Rob Lowe and Gaia Scodellaro in You, Me and the Apocalypse

Rob, people think of lots of things when they think of you. Your older roles. West Wing on Netflix. The Grinder. Your name triggers a lot of memories of TV shows and movies. But you’re also a father. You’ve also done charity work. If the end of the world is coming, Rob Lowe, who do you want to be remembered as?

Rob Lowe: Wow. Great question. Thanks. I would like to be thought of as a father first. My two sons are amazing young men. I’m very proud of them. One of them is on The Grinder now as a reoccurring actor, as he’s getting a 4.0 at Stanford. My other is graduating Duke and going to law school. They’re great human beings. That’s way more important than anything I’ve ever done in my career. Then I just think that, as you allude to, different people have different connections to me. Some are recent. Some go back 30 years. It would be an incredible legacy to be one of those people that has been in a relationship with an audience their entire life time.

Beyond the bucket list idea mentioned earlier, what would the two of you do if the end of the world was coming in the next 30 days?

Rob Lowe: Iain, why don’t you take this one? I want to hear what you want to do over there.

Iain Hollands: I’d probably have to make a My Name Is Earl-style list of all the many people that I’ve irritated and done wrong by over the years and start working my way through. I don’t know how far I’d get. But you know I’d hope to make it down to the end of page one, maybe.

Rob Lowe: Yes. For me, it’s funny. I wouldn’t want to quit my job if the end of the world was coming. I understand: Why do it? No one’s going to be around to see it. But, it’s interesting. I’m not sure I would change much about my life, other than I would make sure that I would get my kids out of school and make them come home so we could all be together. But, you know, I would keep on trucking.

You, Me and the Apocalypse

Iain, when did this idea come to you?

Iain Hollands: I first pitched it about five years ago. I wanted to write a show about the apocalypse, but where the apocalypse was weirdly the best thing that could have ever happened to all these characters. When you first meet them, they’re all trapped in some ways by their everyday worries. Then weirdly, the knowledge that the world’s ending allows them to free themselves from the things that have been holding them back. Just concentrate on what really matters. That was my starting point. It took a long time. It’s a British show, so to start it off, we had to get a British network on board first. Then NBC came onboard later. It took quite a while to get everything together.

Do you know any of the characters personally that you wrote about?

Iain Hollands: I haven’t based any of the characters on anyone particularly. I think the character of Jamie is probably the closest to me, in a very British way. He dithers quite a lot. He’s not as proactive as Americans tend to be. Tend to be you know very heroic and know what to do. Whereas, I would just have no idea whatsoever in that situation what the best thing to do would be. So, yes, he’s probably the nearest to me.

If you could just bring out one message to all of your fans and all of the viewers of the show, what message would that be?

Rob Lowe: Well, let’s see. I would describe the show to the fans as a boundary-pushing comedy drama. It presents the end of the world in a way that you’ve never seen before, through extraordinary drawn, interesting characters, with plot twists that you will absolutely never see coming.

Rob Lowe in You, Me and the Apocalypse

Rob, you mentioned earlier in this conversation you had read the bible pretty much in its entirety, which you had not done before. What did you get from it that you didn’t know or understand before?

Rob Lowe: Well, honestly, every time I do any reading, I’m kind of struck with the same thing, really. Other than if you’re looking for guidance, then obviously you get different things from it depending on what you’re looking to have answered. Overall, I’m just always struck with the language. It’s so beautiful. I’m also struck with things like how many common phrases we have in our everyday casual vernacular that come from the bible. You’re like, “Oh, that’s where that comes from?” I’m not breaking any new ground when I say it’s such a work of depth and inspiration and beauty that I’m amazed each time I open it.

Copyright ©2016 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: January 27, 2016.

Photos ©2016.  Courtesy of NBC/Universal.  All rights reserved

Nickelodeon’s 29th Annual Kids’ Choice Awards

2016 Kids Choice Awards – On your marks…  Get set…  Vote! 

Voting kicks off today, February 2nd, 2016 for this years Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards!  Superstar nominees in 22 different categories include favs like Adele, Justin Bieber, Jennifer Lawrence, Taylor Swift, Chris Pratt, The Weeknd, Anna Kendrick, Jennifer Lopez, Selena Gomez and Chris Hemsworth and many more!

This years KCA awards will be hosted by country star and The Voice mentor, Blake Shelton and will air on Saturday, March 12, at 8 p.m. (ET/PT)

So, go vote on Nick.com or the Nick App and have your voices heard.  Make sure you support your favs in music, film, television, literature and video games!  Check out the nominees below:

TELEVISON:

Favorite TV Show

Austin & Ally

Girl Meets World

Henry Danger

Jessie

Lab Rats: Bionic Island

The Thundermans

Favorite Family TV Show

Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Modern Family

Once Upon a Time

The Big Bang Theory

The Flash

The Muppets

Favorite Male TV Star – Kids’ Show

Aidan Gallagher – Nicky Harper, Nicky, Ricky, Dicky & Dawn

Casey Simpson – Ricky Harper, Nicky, Ricky, Dicky & Dawn

Jace Norman – Henry Hart, Henry Danger

Jack Griffo – Max Thunderman, The Thundermans

Ross Lynch – Austin Moon, Austin & Ally

Tyrel Jackson Williams – Leo Dooley, Lab Rats: Bionic Island

Favorite Male TV Star – Family Show

Anthony Anderson – Andre ‘Dre’ Johnson, Black-ish

Ben McKenzie – James Gordon, Gotham

Grant Gustin – Barry Allen, The Flash

Jim Parsons – Sheldon Cooper, The Big Bang Theory

Johnny Galecki – Leonard Hofstadter, The Big Bang Theory

Rico Rodriguez – Manny Delgado, Modern Family

Favorite Female TV Star – Kids’ Show

Debby Ryan – Jessie Prescott, Jessie

Dove Cameron – Liv Rooney, Liv and Maddie

Kira Kosarin – Phoebe Thunderman, The Thundermans

Laura Marano – Ally Dawson, Austin & Ally

Lizzy Greene – Dawn Harper, Nicky, Ricky, Dicky & Dawn

Zendaya – K.C. Cooper, K.C. Undercover

Favorite Female TV Star – Family Show

Chloe Bennet – Daisy “Skye” Johnson, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Jennifer Morrison – Emma Swan, Once Upon a Time

Kaley Cuoco – Penny Hofstadter, The Big Bang Theory

Ming-Na Wen – Melinda May, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Sarah Hyland – Haley Dunphy, Modern Family

Sofia Vergara – Gloria Delgado-Pritchett, Modern Family

Favorite Talent Competition Show

America’s Got Talent

American Idol

Dance Moms

Dancing with the Stars

The Voice

Favorite Cooking Show*

Cake Boss

Cake Wars

Chopped Junior

Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives

Hell’s Kitchen

MasterChef Junior

Favorite Cartoon

ALVINNN!!! and The Chipmunks

Gravity Falls

Ninjago

Phineas & Ferb

SpongeBob SquarePants

Steven Universe

Teen Titans Go!

The Amazing World of Gumball

FILM:

Favorite Movie

Ant-Man

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Cinderella

Daddy’s Home

Jurassic World

Pitch Perfect 2

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2

Favorite Movie Actor

Chris Evans – Steve Rogers/Captain America, Avengers: Age of Ultron

Chris Hemsworth – Thor, Avengers: Age of Ultron

Chris Pratt – Owen, Jurassic World

John Boyega – Finn, Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Robert Downey Jr. – Tony Stark/Iron Man, Avengers: Age of Ultron

Will Ferrell – Brad Whitaker, Daddy’s Home

Favorite Movie Actress

Anna Kendrick – Beca, Pitch Perfect 2

Daisy Ridley – Rey, Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Jennifer Lawrence – Katniss Everdeen, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2

Lily James – Cinderella, Cinderella

Rebel Wilson – Fat Amy, Pitch Perfect 2

Scarlett Johansson – Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow, Avengers: Age of Ultron

Favorite Animated Movie

Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip

Home

Hotel Transylvania 2

Inside Out

Minions

The Peanuts Movie

Favorite Voice From an Animated Movie

Amy Poehler – Joy, Inside Out

Jennifer Lopez – Lucy, Home

Jim Parsons – Oh, Home

Justin Long – Alvin, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip

Sandra Bullock – Scarlet Overkill, Minions

Selena Gomez- Mavis, Hotel Transylvania 2

MUSIC:

Favorite Music Group

Fall Out Boy

Fifth Harmony

Imagine Dragons

Maroon 5

One Direction

Pentatonix

Favorite Male Singer

Blake Shelton

Drake

Ed Sheeran

Justin Bieber

Nick Jonas

The Weeknd

Favorite Female Singer

Adele

Ariana Grande

Meghan Trainor

Nicki Minaj

Selena Gomez

Taylor Swift

Favorite Song Of The Year

Bad Blood (feat. Kendrick Lamar) – Taylor Swift

Can’t Feel My Face – The Weeknd

Hello – Adele

Hotline Bling – Drake

Thinking Out Loud – Ed Sheeran

What Do You Mean? – Justin Bieber

Favorite New Artist

Alessia Cara

DNCE

OMI

Shawn Mendes

Silento

WALK THE MOON

Favorite Collaboration*

Bad Blood – Taylor Swift feat. Kendrick Lamar

Downtown – Macklemore & Ryan Lewis feat. Eric Nally, Melle Mel, Kool Moe Dee and Grandmaster Caz

Good For You – Selena Gomez feat. A$AP Rocky

Like I’m Gonna Lose You – Meghan Trainor feat. John Legend

See You Again – Wiz Khalifa feat. Charlie Puth

Where Are Ü Now – Skrillex, Justin Bieber & Diplo

OTHER CATEGORIES:

Favorite Book

Diary of a Minecraft Zombie

Diary of a Wimpy Kid series

Harry Potter series

Star Wars: Absolutely Everything You Need To Know

The Hunger Games series

The Maze Runner series

Favorite Video Game

Disney Infinity 3.0

Just Dance 2016

Minecraft: Story Mode

Skylander SuperChargers

SpongeBob HeroPants

Super Mario Maker

Deadpool

DEADPOOL (2016)

Starring Ryan Reynolds, Morena Baccarin, Ed Skrein, T.J. Miller, Gina Carano, Leslie Uggams, Brianna Hildebrand, Karan Soni, Jed Rees, Stefan Kapicic, Randal Reeder, Isaac C. Singleton Jr. and Stan Lee.

Screenplay by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick.

Directed by Tim Miller.

Distributed by 20th Century Fox.  107 minutes.  Rated R.

Turn your snark and violence meter up to 11, here comes Deadpool.

Based on a cult-favorite Marvel comic book series, but only tangentially connected to the series of Marvel Universe films being released by Disney – Deadpool‘s rights are owned by Fox along with The X-Men films and Fantastic Four – this film exists to try to subvert everything we have ever learned about superhero films.

Deadpool is actually considered an anti-hero in the Marvel universe.  (“I’m super, but I’m no hero!” he insists.)  Ryan Reynolds – who is quite used to playing superheroes from the barely seen Green Lantern and Paper Man – had actually played the role of Wade Wilson/Deadpool once before in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.  However, in this reboot origin story, which is an infinitely better film than Origins, he nails the role in a way that makes it feel tailor made for him.

Wade Wilson is a handsome, smart-assed, jaded criminal who has come up with a rather unique spot in the underworld, he rents himself out to beat up people who are even worse than him.  He’s constantly making topical wisecracks – about everything from Wham! to the Taken movies to Sinead O’Connor to Yakov Smirnov.  He has one sorta friend, a bartender named Weasel (TJ Miller) at his local tough bar, but mostly he has always been a loner.

He has finally, after a lifetime of romantic cynicism, met his perfect woman (which in his case means a stripper and sometime escort who is just as jaded and wounded by life as he is, as well as being sexually ravenous).  Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) sees him as another lost soul, and in a series of holiday-sex quick shots of the couple we watch them falling more and more in love.

However, true to his life belief, he can’t be happy for any long period of time, so soon after he asks Vanessa to marry him, he finds out that he has terminal cancer.  Determined not to hurt Vanessa, he disappears and eventually agrees to a shady potential option to save his life.  A strange man (Jed Rees) offers him the opportunity to join a study which will hopefully turn him into a mutated hero and save his life.

Wade shows up at the warehouse where the study is being held, where an evil scientist named Ajax (Ed Skrein) puts him through all sorts of torture until the change finally takes – he has become immortal, his body automatically healing any injury he receives.  However, it has an unexpected side effect, he loses his good looks, his skin covered with bumpy, discolored scar tissue.

No longer sick, he is still unable to go back to Vanessa for fear she will reject him due to his new scary looks.  He creates a red costume (better to hide bloodstains), gets a bunch of blades and firearms and sets out to avenge himself on all the people who did this to him – as well as cohorts and dozens of innocent bystanders.  He is kept in line, somewhat, by two fellow X-Men, a huge metal behemoth named Colossus (Stefan Kapicic), and sullen goth girl Ellie Phimister, aka Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand), who can create huge fireballs, when she’s not too busy texting.

Keep in mind before taking the young kids, figuring it is just another Marvel film with a guy in a funny costume, that there is a reason why this is the first Marvel movie to have an R-rating.  The movie has some extreme violence (even for a Marvel film), very explicit language and even a bit of sex and nudity.

The script is funny and smart (if occasionally a hair too clever for its own good), the action is wild and bloody and the love story is refreshingly anti-romantic.  Deadpool may be a bit of a tough sell to people who don’t care about comics, but the fan-boys will be salivating.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2016 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: February 12, 2016.

Where to Invade Next

WHERE TO INVADE NEXT (2016)

Featuring Michael Moore, Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, Krista Kiuru, Tim Walker. Amel Smaoui, Jenny Tumas, Pasi Sahlberg, Halla Tomasdottir and Borut Pahor.

Written by Michael Moore.

Directed by Michael Moore.

Distributed by Dog Eat Dog Films.  110 minutes.  Rated R.

With politics in a weird state of flux, with some people feeling the Bern and others feeling the Trump and the people on all sides screaming for blood from the political establishment, it’s not surprising that Michael Moore is back in theaters.

Where to Invade Next is a definite return to form for Moore, six years after his last film, the underwhelming and unfocused Capitalism: A Love Story.  It is also, surprisingly, perhaps his most optimistic film ever.  And you know what?  A little bit of the starry-eyed dreamer works on Moore.

Despite its aggressive title, Where to Invade Next is not some anti-military (or pro-military) ‘Murica-rules type of screed.  Instead, Moore takes on a more puckish look at the global community.  He decides to visit countries all over the world, find good aspects of every culture and bring them back to the US to implement.

That makes Where to Invade Next a oddball kind of political travelogue, with the director visiting gorgeous sites all over the world talking with the locals about some vaguely political, but mostly humanitarian, positions.

For example, a trip to Italy uncovers that workers get eight weeks paid vacation per year, and they are every bit as productive as their American counterpoints.  Or in French schools, the children are fed nutritious gourmet lunches rather than junk food, causing them to be both healthier and better educated about nutrition.  Or how Finland has become the world’s best educated country simply by letting kids be kids, play, and have no homework.  Or the tiny country of Slovenia decreeing that all college educations should be completely free, simply for the good of the citizenry.  Or the truly gob-smacking idea that Tunisia’s ruling party would be willing to step down from power just to satisfy the will of the people.

It’s all enough to make Sarah Palin’s head explode.  And yet it’s a charming dream.

Some of the stuff is a little hard to believe translating to America – for example Norway’s shockingly low-security prison system, where even the most hardened criminals face a maximum of 21 years in jail, and even then they live in relatively nice apartments on a compound and have full, safe lives.  However, this apparently shocking laxness leads to the film’s most emotionally-charged section – with the father of a boy who was killed by a mass-murderer passionately arguing that if the state were to kill a criminal, no matter how horrific, that they were no better than he was.

Moore also shows a feminist streak in the latter going, one that he has rarely explored and that looks good on him.  Pointing out how the Iceland economic disaster was caused when four out of the five major national banks were destroyed by greed and graft – and the one bank that survived was the only one run by women.  Then he showed how the women banded together to save the country’s economy and restore it to even higher levels than had been gained previously to the collapse.

As always, Moore is an affable host, keeping things funny, keeping things light, but not afraid to wallow in particularly emotional sections.

As Moore flies back and forth between the different cultures, a common thread builds.  Most of these policies are variations on American ideas.  We have had it all in our grasp, we just have to figure out how to implement the great ideas.  To a certain extent, perhaps Where to Invade Next is a progressive dream – which is not completely unexpected from Moore – but wow, what a nice dream.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2016 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: February 12, 2016.

How To Be Single

HOW TO BE SINGLE (2016)

Starring Dakota Johnson, Rebel Wilson, Alison Brie, Leslie Mann, Damon Wayans Jr., Nicholas Braun, Anders Holm, Jake Lacy, Jason Mantzoukas, Colin Jost, Mickey Gooch Jr., Sarah Ramos, Vanessa Rubio, Zani Jones Mbayise, Brent Morin, Kay Cannon, Judith Lightfoot Clarke, Patrick Boll, Anna Eilinsfeld, Charlotte Kirk, Angela Bellotte and Kevin Yamada.

Screenplay by Abby Kohn & Marc Silverstein and Dana Fox.

Directed by Christian Ditter.

Distributed by Warner Brothers.  110 minutes.  Rated R.

From the coming attractions trailers, you may not expect too much going in to How to Be Single, simply a raunchy sitcom about the single life of four New York ladies.

The low expectations somehow work to an advantage for How to Be Single, because it turns out to be much better than you ever imagined.  Not to say it is a great film, but it is an immensely likable one that is much savvier about the modern single life than the trailer lets on.

Yes, it does have the silly, sleazy, sexy thrills promised, but more to the point, How to Be Single is a look at modern friendship and bonding through a prism of a romantic comedy.  It is deeper than it lets on.  It doesn’t trade in rom-com clichés – half the ladies here don’t find Mr. Right, they end up on their own and happier for it.  Rebel Wilson’s character outright rejects monogamy and the story doesn’t punish her for her impudence, in fact she is probably enjoying herself more than anyone.

How to Be Single is a romantic comedy mashed up with an anti-rom-com and it wears its contradictions well.  Even more importantly, it is the story of friendship, of four women finding their places in the world.

For years, people have complained that there were not enough comedies about women’s friendships.  There was a mini-surge after Bridesmaids became a huge hit a few years ago, but other than the Pitch Perfect movies, most of them were simply bad movies, often trying too hard to shock, things like Bachelorette Party and Hot Pursuit.

How to Be Single, while far from a perfect film, is a good return to form.  (Is it a coincidence that all of the good ones seem to co-star Rebel Wilson?)

It tells the story of four women looking for love, or sex, or whatever, in modern Manhattan.  (Though technically, only three of them are close, one of the four lead characters circles around like a satellite of the other three, but never really interacts with them.  In fact, when one of the three friends mentions her in passing to a bartender character, the audience is surprised to know she actually knows who the other woman is.)

Alice (Dakota Johnson) is a small-town girl moved to the big city.  She decided to take a temporary break with her long-time boyfriend so that she can discover who she really is in life, only to find out that he thought the break was more permanent than she did and has moved on.

Through her new job, she meets Robin (Rebel Wilson), an unapologetic party girl who is determined to introduce her to all of the wild thrills that New York has to offer.

Alice’s older sister Meg (Leslie Mann) is a successful obstetrician who has been so busy with her career of delivering babies that she has always convinced herself she didn’t want one herself.  Then, suddenly, the biological clock starts ticking loudly and the single doc decides that she wants to become pregnant through artificial insemination.  And of course, when her plan finally works, she meets the perfect younger man (Jake Lacy).

The last woman is Lucy (Alison Brie), who lives upstairs from the bar that all the other women go to and hangs out at the bar to steal its wifi.  She believes she has come up with the perfect formula to meet a man online, but eventually learns that there is no science to matters of the heart.  She befriends the bartender (Anders Holm), a commitment-phobe who starts taking an interest in her, and who is her slight connection to the rest of the film.

It’s all light and funny and yet surprisingly smart and heartfelt.  How to Be Single is one of the most pleasant surprises to hit the multiplexes in a while.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2016 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: February 12, 2016.

Jake Marcionette in New York. Photo by Nick Bergmann © 2016

Jake Marcionette

Surviving in the YA World

by Jay S. Jacobs

When you hear the term Young Adult books, you tend to think of these younger people as being the readers of the books, not the writers.

Jake Marcionette is doing his part to change that conception.

Marcionette was only 12 years old when he wrote his first book, Just Jake.  At thirteen, that book was in book store and on the New York Times best-seller list making him the youngest author ever to gain that honor.  Now 15, he has recently released the third book in his Just Jake series, Camp Wild Survival.

Not bad for a kid who openly admits that writing started out as a chore for him, a job that his mother required Marcionette to do daily, when he’d much rather have been playing with friends or trying out video games.

“When I was younger I hated to do it,” Marcionette admitted.  “My mom forced me and my sister to write and I couldn’t stand it.  I started eventually writing about how my day was going, how I was feeling, and I really started to love it.  It really became therapeutic, in a way.  It gave me another way that I could express myself.”

Jake Marcionette in New York. Photo by Nick Bergmann © 2016

Still, it took a huge life shift to inspire Marcionette to get really serious about writing a whole book, which became Just Jake.

“I moved from Florida to Maryland and that was tough for me, so I put all that into the book,” Marcionette continued.  “That’s really what the first book is about, the character moves from Florida to Maryland.  That’s really how I got the writing bug.”

He was trying to process the lifestyle change.  There was a new school, the problem of making new friends and leaving old ones behind.  A whole new series of expectations from kids around him – and yet at the same time he was something of a blank slate to the new kids.  Even simple things like climate was strange and new.

“There’s definitely a noticeable difference,” Marcionette said.  “Even just looking at the terrain, from palm trees to pine trees.  And the cold.  But there is definitely a cultural shift.”

It is never easy to be the new kid at a school, and Marcionette seized upon that feeling of displacement to write a funny and sometimes touching book.  It is one that he admits is only partially autobiographical.

Jake Marcionette in New York. Photo by Nick Bergmann © 2016

“The book itself is loosely based on my life,” Marcionette allowed.  “Like, I gave you the example of when I moved from Florida to Maryland.  That actually happened to me.  It’s maybe 50/50.  I definitely have to make some stuff up, just to make the book funny and readable.  But a lot of it is based on my life.”

Which in itself is kind of interesting, because the main character’s name is also Jake.  The stories involve Jake and his family, his mother father and sister.  What do his family and friends feel about perhaps being the inspiration for what is happening in the Just Jake books?

“I talk about my sister a lot in the book, and she probably didn’t like the way that she was portrayed,” Marcionette admitted.  “But I think she’s gotten over it.  I change a lot of names, so a lot of kids don’t know it’s them.  I get that question a lot: ‘Is it me?  Is this character me?’  I can never tell any of them.  So it’s a bit tough for them to really know.”

Jake Marcionette in New York. Photo by Nick Bergmann © 2016

So Marcionette had finished a book at merely twelve.  What then?  How do you get it to the people?  How do you get it into book stores?  It was a question that Marcionette had no real answer to, so he did what any savvy modern kid would do when faced with a life dilemma: he looked it up on the internet.

“I wanted to get my book published and I had no idea what I was doing, so I went to Google,” Marcionette explained.  “I typed in ‘How to get a book published.’  I kept reading that I had to get a literary agent.  I had no idea what or who that was, so I just printed out a big list of them and started calling them up.  I called up a bunch of them.  I got a lot of nos.  Got hung up on a lot.

“I was really fortunate that really far down on my list was Dan Lazar,” Marcionette continued.  “I called him up and got his secretary.  He wanted me to email it to him.  He really liked it and I signed with him that night.  Four weeks later I was going to New York to meet four major publishers.  I met with Penguin.  They really seemed to like it.  That’s really how the Just Jake series was born.”

Still, it was crazy to actually see his book in the stores.

“It was surreal,” Marcionette said.  “You go through the writing process and the publishing process, have all these ideas, put them down on paper.  Then you work with an editor, just to get it to the point where you’re finished and all that hard work pays off in a way that you can feel it and look at it.  It’s really a surreal moment.”

Jake Marcionette in New York. Photo by Nick Bergmann © 2016

What about seeing his name on The New York Times best-sellers list?

“That was crazy.  I’ve always read The New York Times.  I’ve always read The Book Review.  Seeing your name on it, it was really special.”

One thing that had inspired the book was the fact that as a reader, Marcionette had noticed that YA novels had a tendency to be slanted towards girls.  He thought there must be an audience of boys like him to embrace.

“I think girls read more than boys, typically,” Marcionette said.  “Publishing companies really tend to gear a lot of their titles towards girls to read, which is smart business and I get that.  But there are not a lot of books for younger readers especially for boys.”

For example, one of his favorite series as a reader was somewhat written for a wider audience.

“For me, the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series was what got me to love writing.  And love reading.  There’s not a lot of those type of books out there.  I really wanted Just Jake to be a book for kids, by a kid.  For all kids.  That’s inclusive to any kid.  That any kid can just pick up and start reading and enjoy it.”

After Just Jake became popular in 2013, Marcionette went to work on follow-ups.  The second book was Just Jake: Dog Eat Dog, in which Jake and his class start a business grooming animals.

Jake Marcionette in New York. Photo by Nick Bergmann © 2016

The newest one is Just Jake: Camp Wild Survival, in which Jake and his family go to a survival camp being run by an Australian reality TV show star.  That character was not specifically based on any specific TV star.  “I’m a big fan of Bear Grylls, Les Stroud and a lot of these reality TV survival men,” Marcionette said.  “It’s a mixture of all of them combined.”

Unlike his literary doppelganger, the real Jake and his family moved back to Florida not that long after the big move that inspired the first book.  The character of Jake is always coming up with crazy money-making schemes, as well, a trait that Marcionette admits does not extend to real life.  Well, except, of course, becoming a best-selling writer.

“Definitely not to the extent that Jake [the character] has,” Marcionette said.  “When I was younger, I opened up an in-house mailing.  I’d make these little mailboxes and my family members could make notes and send them to each other around the house.  I charged like $0.25 a month.  So, definitely there has been some, but not to the extant as the character Jake.”

Of course, life has changed in many ways over the last three years.

“Schoolwise, I used to go to public school, and now I go to public online school,” Marcionette said.  “I go to FLVS, it’s the Florida virtual school.  It gives me flexibility to have author visits and write.  I love it.”

Jake Marcionette in New York. Photo by Nick Bergmann © 2016

The extra freedom and time have given him the opportunity to hone his craft, Marcionette is certain.  He feels that the sky is the limit for the series and he wants to take advantage of this opportunity.

“As I get older and as I experience more, my writing gets better,” Marcionette said.  “I’m in an interesting position that every book I think is the best book.  I’m a better writer as time goes on.  My third book is better than second book, my second book is better than my first book.  That’s not really how it goes.  A lot of series decline over time, but I have the opportunity to ascend over time.”

A huge part of the series is a group of funny and ironic visuals, a mixture of illustrations, photos and documents.  Marcionette spends a lot of time working on both the editing of the books and also helping to get the look of the books down pat.

“For the first manuscript, I used a lot of stock photos.  My first book was filled with stock photos that really gave my illustrator, Victor [Rivas Vallai] a lot to go off of.  In the book, it’s a mix of stock photos and real illustrations.  The first book was different, it was already fully illustrated with stock photos, he just had to illustrate a lot of them.  The second and third books, it was really when I was writing it, I’d go, ‘Oh, here’s a good place for a picture.’  I’d just put in a side note: ‘Put a picture of…’ and describe what I’m thinking of.”

Jake Marcionette in New York. Photo by Nick Bergmann © 2016

So are we going to continue to follow Jake out of middle school, into high school, then college, and eventually out into the workforce?  Marcionette is very receptive to the idea, though he is taking it one step at a time.

“I would love to continue the Just Jake series,” Marcionette said.  “Hopefully there will be a number four coming out.  But I’m definitely looking at maybe writing some new stuff.  Working on some new series and projects.”

Now that he is growing older, will Marcionette stick with the young adult genre, or does he see branching out into other styles of books?

“I love where I am.  I love the middle-grade fiction.  I just love all parts of writing.  So, yeah, I’d love to go maybe a couple of years younger, chapter books.  Right now I’m in the middle-grade fiction, so that’s something that’s always really interesting to me.  Maybe a couple for grades that are too young to read the Just Jake series.”

Like he said earlier, the idea reminds him of the series that he grew up on.  He hopes that his books may inspire young readers to read and write.

Jake Marcionette in New York. Photo by Nick Bergmann © 2016

“When I was younger I was a big fan of Diary of a Wimpy Kid.  I loved the series so much.  I thought Greg was hilarious.  That was really just one of those books that got me to love reading.”

Of course, tastes change as well, and as a reader Marcionette has been branching out from his home turf.

“Now, my favorite book would probably be The Godfather, by Mario Puzo,” Marcionette said.  “I love the Lord of the Rings series.  I love that medieval, mythical genre.  I’m a big fan of Game of Thrones.”

Still, unlike so many popular YA titles like The Hunger Games, Maze Runner, The Giver and Divergent, Marcionette doesn’t see writing about a dystopian future.  Jake (the character) is not likely to face the apocalypse any time soon.

“Not yet,” Marcionette laughed.  “Maybe someday, but Just Jake is firmly in middle school.”

Jake the character may be, but Jake the author has moved past middle school.  Still, he makes time for friends, even if he doesn’t see them every day in class.  Most of them treat him no differently than when he was just another kid in the neighborhood.

“They really treat me the same.  It’s kind of frustrating that no one is treating me better,” he laughed.  “Definitely everything has stayed the same.  Everyone is real proud of me, but there hasn’t been this big difference.”

Copyright ©2016 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: February 12, 2016.

Photos by Nick Bergmann © 2016

James Burrows

James Burrows

Mr. Must See TV

by Jay S. Jacobs

James Burrows has arguably given America more belly laughs over the years than anyone else, and yet many people do not even know his name.

As arguably the most prolific comedy director in television over the past five decades, Burrows has shaped such classic series as The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show, Laverne & Shirley, Taxi, Cheers, Friends, Will & Grace, Dharma & Greg, The Big Bang Theory, Two & a Half Men, Mike & Molly and many, many more.

In fact, with his current, upcoming series Crowded, Burrows directed his 1,000th episode of television.  Actor and producer Sean Hayes, who worked with Burrows during the eight-year run of Will & Grace, as well as on the shorter-lived series Sean Saves the World, The Millers and as a producer on Crowded, decided that it was well past time for Burrows’ career to be celebrated.

That celebration will be in the form of Must See TV: An All-Star Tribute to James Burrows, a two-hour special in which actors from the casts of many of Burrows’ classic series return to talk about working with the behind-the-scenes comedy legend.  The special has generated excitement for reuniting the cast of Friends (though due to scheduling problems, Matthew Perry has to appear via video), Taxi, Will & Grace and many more.

A few weeks before the special was to air, we were one of several media outlets lucky enough to take part in a discussion with the legendary director.

MUST SEE TV: AN ALL STAR TRIBUTE TO JAMES BURROWS — Pictured: “Must See TV: An All Star Tribute to James Burrows” Key Art — (Photo by: NBCUniversal)

I was reading that you first met Mary Tyler Moore when you were on the crew of the play Holly Golightly. At the time did you imagine first that she would play such a big part in your career? And second, that you’d be still doing this after all these years?

No. I had absolutely no idea. I was the assistant to the Assistant Stage Manager on the play. My father had written the play. It was actually a musical of Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The two stars were Mary Tyler Moore and Richard Chamberlain. I was literally in charge of them, since they were Hollywood people. You know, making sure that they were okay and taken care of and coming to the Broadway stage. So I met Mary. Under the circumstances – the show was a big failure, never opened, played four previews on Broadway, was a disaster – we were in this lifeboat together. I became kind of friendly with Mary and Grant Tinker [her then-husband and business partner]. But I had no idea back then that I would ever end up in television.

You are the genius behind some of the most iconic shows. What is it like for you seeing all of the casts of many of your shows coming together to honor you and all of your extraordinary works?

Well, I’m not the sole genius behind it. And to call myself a genius… I can’t really do that. But thank you. The writing and the acting go into making a hit show along with the directing. In my speech I gave them all credit because they’re all responsible for where I am. To see those casts in the room starting with Taxi and ending with Crowded was, like as I said, a good acid trip. It was just amazing to see all those actors in one room at the same time. The comradery and the affection that they had, not only for me but for the other actors in the other shows was extraordinary.

You had a great deal of success, some of the all-time TV classics. I’m wondering if you ever think about the shows that didn’t quite work out like O.K. Crackerby! which you had a role backstage on or The Associates which just never caught on.

Well O.K. Crackerby!, that was a show my father wrote. My father Abe Burrows. I was Burl Ives’ dialogue coach on that. I didn’t have much to do on that. The Associates I did while I was doing Taxi. I did I think two episodes of it. It was a wonderful show, just never got the ratings. Back then, shows were cancelled if you had a 25 or 26 share. You were cancelled because most of hit shows were doing 40 shares. There’s only one show that I did that I thought should not have been cancelled and [should have been] extended because it was just a wonderful show. It was called The Class. It was [created by] David Crane and Jeffrey Klarik. A group of people who reunited at a class reunion. I thought that was unjustifiably fast. That’s the one show I’m sad about.

MUST SEE TV: AN ALL-STAR TRIBUTE TO JAMES BURROWS — Pictured: (l-r) David Schwimmer, Matt LeBlanc, James Burrows, Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow — (Photo by: Chris Haston/NBC)

Do you have a gut feeling when you do pilots on shows, whether they’re going to succeed or not catch on in the ratings?

I do have a gut feeling. I had a gut feeling about that. I really did because the run-throughs and the show in front of the audience was just crazy. I knew from the dress rehearsal of Cheers, Friends, Frasier and Will & Grace how special those shows were. Even The Big Bang [Theory] and Two and a Half Men. I have that sense. But I was always disappointed about The Class.

Having 1,000 episodes under your belt, which episode stands out most for you?

Oh, that’s such a hard question. I have lots of children who are my favorite episodes. Just a couple of them I think… Sam and Diane kissing at the end of the first year of Cheers. Reverend Jim taking his driving test [in Taxi.] Woody’s wedding [also in Cheers.] David Schwimmer and the cat in Friends. Will, Grace, Jack and Karen all in the shower together on Will & Grace. The first episode of Third Rock from the Sun when these characters were exposed to the Earth. I mean there’s so many. The pilot of Frasier is an extraordinary pilot. So there are all these shows. I have many, many, many children who are my favorite episodes, so I can’t choose. You love all your children equally.

Is there a story that really sticks out for you from your career directing an episode?

Stories, no. I mean the first year I did five episodes [of] The Mary Tyler Moore Show, my first show. Of course that story is really how I got started. It was not a very good script. Mary had brought me out from New York to do one show, Mary and Grant Tinker. I did everything I possibly could to make that show funny and to work. I’ll never forget Mary coming to me before we shot the show and saying to me, “our investment in you has worked out.” I was blown away by that, even before the show was shot. I think that’s my one episode story because that really kicked me off.

MUST SEE TV: AN ALL-STAR TRIBUTE TO JAMES BURROWS — Pictured: (l-r) Carol Kane, James Burrows, Danny DeVito — (Photo by: Chris Haston/NBC)

What would your ideal crossover be? You’ve done 1,000 episodes of all these different series.

I always thought it would be a good idea if Louie De Palma [Danny DeVito] came and sat at the Cheers bar and met Rhea [Perlman, DeVito’s real-life wife].

You’ve done multiple episodes on some of the most legendary shows on television. What was it about working on Will & Grace that kept you there for all eight seasons and directing every single episode?

To me, that was the funniest show I’ve ever done. It was a fairytale, literally and figuratively. It was not of the real world in a strange way. These were exaggerated characters. Although they were grounded with Will and Grace, there was this exaggeration that made the stuff you could do and get away with on that show so extraordinary. It made me laugh every day. Every day of the week, every day we rehearsed. It was just crazy. It made me feel young. I told my wife. I just do this show because it makes me laugh all the time. Not to say Cheers didn’t make me laugh or anything like that. If I could have I would have done every episode on Cheers. But Will & Grace was just this strange phenomenon that tickled me pink every Tuesday night that we shot the show.

Could you tell us a little bit about how the cast of Friends grew and changed from when you directed the pilot to  your last episode, four or five years later?

It didn’t change at all. It was the same six kids. The one change was the character of Joey. Joey became not so stupid and more sophisticated, although you didn’t lose that angle on Joey because that’s what made him funny a lot of times. Over the first four years they had grown into these enormous stars and had not lost their ability, or grown an ego. They still were and still are great friends. At the reunion when they did my special, it was great to see all five of them together.

MUST SEE TV: AN ALL-STAR TRIBUTE TO JAMES BURROWS — Pictured: (l-r) Matt LeBlanc, James Burrows — (Photo by: Trae Patton/NBC)

You have worked for a long time in the multi-cam format, almost exclusively. What draws you back to that? What do you like about filming in front of a live studio audience?

I’m a theater rat. I was born in the business. My father was Abe Burrows, who wrote Guys and Dolls. Wrote and directed How to Succeed in Business [Without Even Trying]. Wrote and directed Cactus Flower. That’s how I was brought up. He used to trundle me along to rehearsals. I would absorb, not sitting there to learn, it would sink in while I would dream and run around the theater and stuff like that. I started directing shows in summer stock and directing shows at dinner theaters and regional theaters. If you notice all these multi-camera shows, they’re all shot in front of a live audience. For me, the Tuesday or the Friday night, whichever night it is we film, that’s opening night for me. I know how to do that. I know how to handle that. That’s inbred in me. That’s how I think. That’s why I enjoy doing what I do.

With the popularity of Friends that seemingly continues as strong as ever, can you imagine ever something like what they’re doing with Gilmore Girls, reviving the series? Is that something that you think you’d like to be a part of?

I don’t think you should ever go back. I firmly believe in that. I created Cheers along with the Charles Brothers. We’re co-creators. They were gracious enough to give me that credit. They’ve talked to us about a Cheers reunion for years. We don’t want to do one. It’s just, we did that show. That was that show. I don’t think Friends… and I have no control over this, David [Crane] and Marta [Kauffman] are the creators and geniuses behind that show… I don’t think they’ll ever want to do a reunion. It’s what it was. It was a treasure in the history of television. I don’t think you want to revisit that.

Interesting. Is there anything that viewers can expect when they see the Friends cast together during the special?

No. They participated like all the other casts did. They had a question session on a couch with a host, where they talked about what it was like working with me. They do nothing other than what anybody else did in that production.

MUST SEE TV: AN ALL-STAR TRIBUTE TO JAMES BURROWS — Pictured: (l-r) John Ratzenberger, Marilu Henner, George Wendt — (Photo by: Trae Patton/NBC)

I just wanted to get your take on people from all these shows being together in one place. I assume some know each other, but some probably hadn’t met. What was it like having them all there and are there any meetings or mingling that stand out in your mind from the evening?

Well I know that Reno Wilson [Mike & Molly] went to school with Jennifer Aniston. I found that out. I did not know they both went to Performing Arts. There were a lot of crossovers. I mean Danny DeVito knows most of the people there. Schwimmer knew a lot of people there. It just was so amazing when we went to commercial to see all these different people from these different casts going over to talk to other people in other casts. Again it was just an out-of-body experience. It went by fast. I’m so happy that Sean Hayes had this idea.

There was a picture of the Friends and The Big Bang Theory casts together. It just looked like these people had different experiences but in some ways probably some similar experiences.

Yes, absolutely. The popularity of both those shows is extraordinary. It was great to see them hanging out with one another.

What is your take on the network sitcom? Do you think it’s here to stay or do you think we’re going to see them going to streaming services such as Amazon and Netflix?

Well, there are certainly a lot more avenues now to do your shows than there were when I started. There were only three venues, the three networks. Now there are so many. You can do so many shows. However, the problem is that there’s only a certain amount of writers. Comedy writers, I’m speaking specifically about that. That doesn’t change. Usually there are 60 to 75 really great ones. Now there are so many more venues. So you have people doing shows that are not any good anymore for these particular venues. You know, I’ve been around the death of comedy for a long time. It’s always survived. I’ve been around the death of multi-camera for a while and it’s always survived. It’s a cyclical business. You need one good show to revive the business. People need product. People need to laugh. There will always be a market for comedy.

MUST SEE TV: AN ALL-STAR TRIBUTE TO JAMES BURROWS — Pictured: (l-r) Lisa Kudrow, Megan Mullally — (Photo by: Trae Patton/NBC)

Do you have a favorite bottle episode?

A favorite what episode?

Bottle episode.

Bottle, B-O-T-T-L-E?

Yes. Where everything takes place in the same location.

I never heard that expression.

I listen to too many podcasts I think.

Oh, okay. Well if you watched the first year of Cheers, we never went outside the bar so…

Yes, that’s right. But do you have a favorite episode?

Wow. I’m hard pressed to think. As I said the last episode of the first season of Cheers is a bottle episode. It takes place in both in the bar and Sam and Diane finally kiss. So I think that’s my favorite. I’d have to think. I’d have to reference other shows. Right now my brain is not going to those shows.

What appealed to you about Crowded? I watched the first episode and I really liked it.

The first thing that always appeals to me is good writing. [Creator] Suzanne [Martin] has a pedigree of Frasier. She was on Frasier when I was around there. I know she’s a good writer. She’s done Hot in Cleveland and really, really good shows. She knows what she wants. To me it’s always about the writing. Then the concept comes into play, because concepts are easy to come up with. The execution of the idea, the execution of the concept, is hard. I always give the example of Cheers, a show about a bar and a Tracy-Hepburn relationship. Not the greatest ideas in a world, but it’s the execution of the idea. So Crowded appealed to me that way, with the writing and then with the casting. I did nine out of the 12 episodes. The writing was always good and the interactions with the characters were great. The ensemble feels to me is really important in a show. Most of my shows, I think 99% of my shows are always ensemble shows. That’s what appeals to me, and then the idea. I think a lot of the millennials are affected by this boomerang. There’s an expression. Somebody said to me bottle, so now I have a boomerang expression I understand: where the kids go off, go to college and move back in. I thought that was an interesting idea, but not as much as that execution of the idea.

MUST SEE TV: AN ALL-STAR TRIBUTE TO JAMES BURROWS — Pictured: Patrick Warburton — (Photo by: Chris Haston/NBC)

Can you talk about the chemistry between Carrie Preston and Patrick Warburton? I thought it was pretty great.

Yes. Yes. You know Patrick is a wonderful actor who has a style that we all are familiar with. But, on the show that style had to change. He had to be a bit angry. He had to be a bit loose. Not that kind of thing that he’s so good at and so funny at. So he, and Carrie’s reaction to that, and Carrie being able to play off that, [it] was great. We had a lot of fun in doing the show.

You mentioned your father a couple of times. Do you think your skill in comedy is nature or nurture?

Probably nature. Oh yes. I don’t think you can learn how to be funny. I think you have to be born with that. Then it can be nurtured from there. But you got to have the genes. I believe firmly that I got that from my dad. He then again taught me how to deal with people because I worked for him a couple of times as a stage manager. I saw how he behaved in rehearsal. That was nurture with me. But the comedy instincts, I think you got to be born with.

This question is actually sort of a variation on the last question. As a comic TV director, who were some of your inspirations and who do you feel you learned the most from? Obviously like you said, you can’t learn to be funny. Just to be a good director. I know that for example Jay Sandrich was an early mentor of yours.

Yes. Jay was a big part of my development. When I first came out here I had to observe on how multi-camera comedies were done. The theatrical part, staging, I didn’t have to learn. But I did have to learn how to move the cameras. That you can only learn by watching. So I watched a lot of directors. I watched Jay. From Jay I learned to have an opinion about something. Say what you feel. Say what you think would make the show better. Don’t just be a traffic cop; don’t just move the actors. Talk to the writers. Say this is good. This is bad. This is how I would do this. Jay was great with that. I learned so much from him. In this business, he was my main mentor.

MUST SEE TV: AN ALL-STAR TRIBUTE TO JAMES BURROWS — Season: 2016 — Pictured: (l-r) Christopher Lloyd, Marilu Henner, Danny DeVito, Tony Danza, Carol Kane, Judd Hirsch — (Photo by: Art Streiber/NBC)

You’ve directed so many beloved shows. But were there any shows out there that you really respected and would liked to have done but just never were able to work it out?

I would’ve loved to have done The Dick Van Dyke Show. It’s one of my favorite shows. I would’ve loved to have done Seinfeld. [Everybody Loves] Raymond. I respect those shows. I loved Curb Your Enthusiasm. I think those are the shows. I wish I had Norman Lear’s brain. I don’t think like Norman. But all of his shows, especially All in the Family, just groundbreaking television. That was before my time. But I respect that show and wish I was a part of it.

Every morning people wake up and watch three of the shows you worked on, Taxi, Mary Tyler Moore and The Bob Newhart Show. Those shows are still in syndication 30, 40 years later. What advice do you have for future directors for creating a show that could still last this long?

You never know when you’re directing how long they’re going to last. I have young directors always come to me and ask me questions. Sometimes, if I have time, I let them serve for a week. They always have the question: “What do I have to do?” I said the hardest thing to do was not get your foot in the door. The hardest thing to do is capitalize on the opportunity, or be ready for the opportunity when you get the shot at directing. It’s easier to get your foot in the door than it is to succeed at that moment when you’re given the opportunity. That’s the advice I give to people. Be ready for when that opportunity happens. As far as getting in the foot in the door, you got to knock on the door. I was lucky enough to have worked with Mary Tyler Moore. But you have to keep knocking on doors to try to get your foot in the door. Then if you can get your foot in the door as a PA or a gopher then you’re around the action. You express to people you want to direct. But if they give you that opportunity you got to be ready for it.

MUST SEE TV: AN ALL-STAR TRIBUTE TO JAMES BURROWS — Pictured: Sean Hayes — (Photo by: Paul Drinkwater/NBC)

Not only were you ready for it but you’ve obviously built a rapport. When I look at your resume you’ve done spinoffs of shows too. It’s like you did Mary and then you did all the spinoffs [Rhoda and Phyllis]. And from Cheers you had Frasier. What is your advice to keeping your foot in the door? How do you build this great rapport? The fact that Sean Hayes has used you for his Hazy Mills sitcoms and is doing this special for you. What’s your secret? I mean besides being a great director.

Oh, I think that’s the number one thing. (laughs) I had no credibility in the beginning. But I was lucky enough to be on the Mary Show. When Mary said our investment in you had worked out, she had three or four other shows on the air. She said to people, or Grant said, “Here’s a kid who knows what he’s doing. I think you should use him.” So I went to The [Bob] Newhart Show. I went to Phyllis. I went to Rhoda. And you slowly built a reputation. For that to happen, you got to be good. You got to know what you’re doing. That’s something that again you have to be born with. You have to have confidence in yourself.

Do you look back at the person you were when you first started out on some of those shows, Mary, Bob Newhart and Taxi and shows like that. What bit of advice do you wish you could impart to your younger self?

Well, I think I kind of said it in the answer to the last question. It’s just you have to have confidence in yourself. You have to bring something to the dance. There are a lot of directors working now in television sitcoms who are good directors but they don’t either put enough of themselves into the piece or create stuff or are [not] creative enough to contribute to the piece. That’s what you have to do. You have to not only translate what the writers have written and stage that, but contribute on your own. Which is one of the things I think I do. When I started out, I was not worried about my next job. I was going to do the best thing I could. [The] best show I could possibly do on this Mary Tyler Moore and let the cards fall where they may. Because I kept contributing to it, that’s why I have succeeded.

Copyright ©2016 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: February 20, 2016.

Photos © 2016 Courtesy of NBC/Universal. All rights reserved.

Grease Live!

GREASE LIVE! (2016)

Starring Julianne Hough, Aaron Tveit, Vanessa Hudgens, Carlos PenaVega, Carly Rae Jepsen, Keke Palmer, Kether Donohue, David Del Rio, Jordan Fisher, Andrew Call,  Mario Lopez, Ana Gasteyer, Elle McLemore, Wendell Pierce, Eve Plumb, Haneefah Wood, Sam Clark, Didi Conn, Barry Pearl, Yvette Gonzalez-Nacer, Noah Robbins, Joe Jonas & DNCE, Jon Robert Hall, Jeremy Hudson, Boyz II Men, Jessie J, Jeannie Klisiewicz and Cailan Rose.

Screenplay by Robert Cary and Jonathan Tolins.

Directed by Thomas Kail.

Distributed by Paramount Home Video.  132 minutes.  Not Rated.

Right off the bat, there is some information that needs to be imparted about the video release of FOX-TV’s version of Grease Live!  Grease Live! is not a televised performance of the smash 1973 Broadway musical.  Instead, it is a live performance of the 1978 movie Grease, which was in many ways very, very different from the play.

Storyline, dialogue, musical styles, additional songs written specifically for the movie – all of these are here and accounted for from the film.  Sure, Grease Live! shakes things up occasionally – there are some added band performances to shoehorn in current bands like DNCE (featuring Joe Jonas) and “Hopelessly Devoted To You” is moved deeper into the story (which was easy enough to do, because this was one of the songs written for the movie).  Also, the cast is often allowed to riff and extend the dialogue from the original script, which at least partially explains how the performance goes almost two and a quarter hours.

The songs are also performed in the style of film, not the play.  Listen to the original cast recording of “Summer Nights” with Barry Bostwick, Adrienne Barbeau et al, and you’ll see how radically the movie changed up tempos and added to the pop sheen.

All of this is somewhat understandable.  Let’s face it, most people know Grease from the 1978 movie, not the original 1973 play.  Also, since the musical has returned to the boards in 1992 in London, most of the revivals in the last couple of decades did factor in at least some of the changes from the story and added the hit singles from the movie to the original score.

If they did the original play, people would be scratching their heads, saying “Where is ‘You’re the One That I Want,’ ‘Grease,’ ‘Sandy’ and ‘Hopelessly Devoted to You?'”  They’d be asking how the story went from Los Angeles to the inner city.  When did the T-Birds become the Burger City Boys?  Why is Danny taking Rizzo to the dance?  What are these songs “Alone at the Drive-In Movie” and “All Choked Up?” What happened to the race and the carnival?

So why not do an essentially verbatim live performance of the movie?  And, trust me, I’ve seen the movie dozens of times over the years and the dialogue here is nearly word for word.

Which brings up the most basic concern – what does Grease Live! bring to the party that the original movie, which is still widely watched, didn’t already offer?

On the plus side, the cast is somewhat more age-appropriate to the roles than the famously elderly high school students of the film.  (The actors playing the Pink Ladies and the T-Birds ranged from their late 20s to the 35 year-old Stockard Channing as Rizzo.)  Granted, the pop stars, theater vets and dancers playing the roles here are mostly too old to be in high school, too, but at least these kids are mostly in their early-mid 20s.

This problem is biggest up top.  The leads are played by dancer Julianne Hough (Dancing With the Stars, the remake of Footloose and the film version of Rock of Ages) and Aaron Tveit (The Les Misérables film, Graceland).  Sadly, the two leads – particularly Hough as Sandy – are perfectly fine as singers and dancers but rather bland actors.  (When you have been seriously out-acted in a role by Olivia Newton-John, perhaps you should reconsider your career choice.)  Tveit does a bit better, but seems to periodically slip in and out of a John Travolta imitation.

The stunt casting, which gives roles to pop stars and kids’ TV vets like Vanessa Hudgens (High School Musical), Carlos PenaVega (Big Time Rush), Carly Rae Jespen (“Call Me Maybe”), Keke Palmer (True Jackson), Jordan Fisher (Liv & Maddie), Jessie J (“Bang Bang”) and Joe Jonas (The Jonas Brothers) – all of whom are just fine but few of whom stand out. It would be nice to have some more legitimate actors here.  For example, Kether Donohue (of the FX sitcom You’re the Worst) easily steals pretty much every scene she’s in as Jan, the youngest and nerdiest of the Pink Ladies.

There is also a savvy group of veteran actors and singers who pick up the slack, including Ana Gasteyer (Saturday Night Live), Wendell Pierce (The Wire), Eve Plumb (The Brady Bunch), Mario Lopez (Extra), soul group Boyz II Men and even Grease movie vets Didi Conn (Frenchie) and Barry Pearl (Doodie).  It’s particularly fun when Conn plays a scene up against her old character.

However, even if the acting doesn’t always quite hold up (and frankly, when was Grease ever thought as a thespian’s project), Grease Live! does have an energy and joie de vivre that is undeniable.  The dancing is lively and the music is also pretty damned perfect, even if the new Carly Rae Jepsen song “All I Need Is an Angel” doesn’t quite live up to the rest of the songs here.  A better example of a current song being updated for this show is Joe Jonas and DNCE’s surprisingly nifty fifties revamp of their current pop hit “Cake On the Ocean,” which was recorded for the soundtrack of the show, but did not make the cut for the broadcast.

Unfortunately, having originally run on network TV, some of the songs have to be given alternate “safe for broadcast” lyrics.  Not surprisingly, “Grease Lightning” is nearly unrecognizable (“You know without a doubt, I’ll be really making out in Greased Lightning,” indeed…), but even relatively harmless little bit like “Hey fongool,” a mangled Italian curse in “Look At Me I’m Sandra Dee” gets whitewashed.

Fact of the matter is, if you want to see the movie Grease, it is easily available.  It was a huge hit and has not been off the video market for any extended period of time since the first coming out on VHS in the early 1980s, and it certainly gets re-run on TV often enough.  However, Grease Live! is an energetic and fun new-millennial tribute to a pop culture classic.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2016 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: March 8, 2016.

Adam F. Goldberg

Adam F. Goldberg

Growing Up With The Goldbergs

by Jay S. Jacobs

As a website based in the suburban town of Jenkintown, PA, we here at PopEntertainment.com had gotten used to people outside of the area not knowing exactly where we were.  Sometimes we’d go the simple route and just explain that it is a suburb of Philadelphia.  Sometimes we’d bring up local fun facts, like pointing out that movie star Bradley Cooper grew up a few blocks away from our offices.

Now, thanks to TV producer Adam F. Goldberg, we never really have to explain where Jenkintown is anymore.

Goldberg is the mastermind behind ABC’s hit comedy The Goldbergs, a sweetly nostalgic look at growing up in Jenkintown in the 1980s.  Goldberg was also raised in town (less than a mile away from Cooper, for those of you keeping track) and the loving tribute to his hometown has turned the area into a mini little Hollywood east.  (Coincidentally, there is even a small neighborhood in neighboring Huntington Valley called Hollywood, with a bunch of stucco ranch homes that look like they were imported from the west coast.)

Based on his life, yet with many fanciful embellishments, The Goldbergs has made the borough of Jenkintown into almost another character.  Faithfully using real local sites and real businesses, Goldberg has turned his own wonder years as the smallest child in an eccentric (and very loud) family into TV gold.

Young Adam (played by the previously unknown Sean Giambrone) must traverse the joys and indignities of high school with his overbearing family – brother and sister (Troy Gentile and Hayley Orrantia), mom (Wendy McClendon-Covey), dad (Jeff Garlin) and grandpa (George Segal).  He also experiences some of the defining moments of the 1980s, and captures it all on VHS tape with his bulky camcorder, as Goldberg’s real-life home movies create the spine of the show.

In the middle of the hit third season, Goldberg gave us a call to check in about his show and all things Jenkintown.

The Goldbergs

Obviously, your show is all about it, but in your own words, what was it like growing up in Jenkintown?

I grew up in Jenkintown in the 80s.  Even though it’s just a hop away from downtown Philly, it just felt like such small town life.  Small town suburbia.  Just amazing memories of going to the hobby shop and Martin’s Aquarium and walking into town to Elliott’s Toy Store.  Riding bikes around the neighborhood and catching fireflies.  All that idyllic suburban 80s, no cell phones, no internet.  My best friend lived across the street.  The Kremps lived right across the street.  Emmy Mirsky, [another] character on the show, lived about six houses down on Newbold Road.  So, yeah, just a really small, tiny bubble that in my mind over the years has grown more and more idyllic.

I have friends who live on Newbold Road.

Oh, you do?

Yeah.  I don’t know if you’d know them.  They met your mother when they moved in but I think you were gone by then.

Gotcha.  It’s funny.  The era of my parents has ended.  All of the kids grew up and got married, and all of the parents ended up selling their houses.  The Kremps are the only ones that still remain.

To give you an idea, by the way, we’re just off of Rydal on Grove Avenue.

Awesome.  I know exactly where you are.

Your house on the show is much more modest looking than the house you really grew up in.  Was that a conscious choice to make the characters more relatable?

(laughs)  Well, we’re in LA, and we have to shoot close to the lot.  Nothing really looked like that, or I would have picked a house that resembled the house I grew up in.  I mean, all I do is show video of the house and clips and everything.  We really couldn’t find anything that was comparable.  The house I grew up in is kind of misleading in that even though it is really big, still up until the day my parents sold it, it was set in the 80s.  They never put any money into it and it was kind of falling apart.  I went back and visited with the new owners.  I just knocked on the door.  They watched the show every week, and they are room by room fixing it up.  The kitchen is still exactly the same as it was in the 80s, which is kind of cool.

Sean Giambrone stars in “The Goldbergs.”

Do you get back here often?

I don’t.  The show, we shoot 24 episodes.  It’s a year-round job.  So any free time I have, we’re in California, so to travel back is already two days of my limited time, so we just keep to the west coast nowadays.

How difficult a sell was it telling the network suits that you wanted it to be all about life in a very specific, not all that well-known suburb of Philadelphia?

Well, the good thing about Jenkintown is that it’s like Everytown, USA.  The show is obviously greatly inspired by The Wonder Years.  I’ve been very vocal about that.  That’s my favorite show, growing up, from the 80s.  In that show, they never even mentioned what town it was, but it reminded me of my town.  That was a show about the suburbs, and that’s what this is.  So I pitched Jenkintown to the president of ABC and that didn’t mean anything to him.  He’s from England.  I basically described that it was just Smalltown, USA., riding bikes, not worried about any dangerous elements.  Just feeling free as a kid to roam around and have adventures.  He responded to that.

Right, and even for a small town, both you and Bradley Cooper are from Jenkintown, and Joey Lawrence, Matthew Fox, Mike Vogel and Bob Saget are all from neighboring Abington.  What is it about this area you think that so many make it into show business?

Yeah.  (laughs)  I don’t know.  I mean, I think the thing that all those people… most of those people are around the same age, right?  That’s a really good question.  I don’t know.  I know for me, it was just the time period.  Video games were still in their infancy stage.  There were only four television channels.  There was no internet.  There were no cell phones.  So it was just me and my friends being bored and making movies, just out of necessity, to keep ourselves entertained.  I had home movies shot all around Jenkintown.  Through that, I learned storytelling and characters and writing jokes.  That was the start for me.

THE GOLDBERGS – ABC’s “The Goldbergs” stars Jeff Garlin as Murray Goldberg, Sean Giambrone as Adam Goldberg, Hayley Orrantia as Erica Goldberg, Wendi McLendon-Covey as Beverly Goldberg, Troy Gentile as Barry Goldberg and George Segal as Pops Solomon. (ABC/Bob D’Amico)

How accurate is the show’s family life to your own, and how much is just having fun?  Was your dad always hanging around in this underwear?  Was your mother always scheming and a smotherer?  Does everyone yell?

(laughs)  The truth is, for comedy, I had to tone it down.  The reality is – and it was very much seen in the pilot, which is very polarizing and a lot of people didn’t like – my family is very loud.  In a lot of cases it was going to be an exposé on what it was like growing up in a crazy family.  My original title was How the Hell Am I Normal?  What I did was, when it ended up changing from FOX to ABC, I decided to really soften it and tone it down.  Make it, instead of an exposé, a show that everyone could relate to.  This is not “my family is crazy.”  This is all of our families.  What I ended up doing, which is kind of crazy, is I softened it a lot.  I took out a lot of the abrasiveness that made people want to turn off their TV, I think.  (chuckles)  The only real difference is my oldest brother’s name is Eric, not Erica, who is the sister.

Like you said, you don’t have a sister in real life.  Why did you decide you needed one on the show?

I made that choice because initially the show was called The Silvers.  It was all directly based on my life, but I wasn’t ready to embrace what that meant, so I changed their last name to the Silvers.  In order to make it a little bit different, I made it a girl, because I thought I could tell different kinds of stories.  Then the president of the network said, “The way into this story is to show your videos to make it break out from all the other family shows.  Show your videos and make it your life story.”  So that’s how that happened.

What do your family members think of how they are portrayed?

Look, they love the show.  It’s the sweetest, nicest version of my family that could ever be.  And it ends with hugs every episode.  (laughs)  So, they are very proud.  My mom would be proud if I did anything.  Barry has his complaints, as Barry should.  Definitely that character is so broad and ridiculous.  But, at the same time, he recognizes that it’s him.  Anyone who knows him says, “That character says things you say, does things that you do.”  So, yeah, they all recognize that it’s them at the end of the day, and they love it.

THE GOLDBERGS – “I Caddyshacked the Pool” – Adam comes up with an excuse to not swim in class because he is embarrassed of his changing body, but Coach Mellor says he will fail him unless he participates. So he comes up with a plan that could affect his friendship with Dave Kim. Meanwhile, Erica struggles to find an identity, so she creates a club at school, but Barry ruins the experience for her when he joins the club as well, on “The Goldbergs,” WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 14 (8:30-9:00 p.m., ET) on the ABC Television Network. (ABC/Michael Desmond)
TROY GENTILE, MATT BUSH, AJ MICHALKA

How important is it to you to use real local businesses – like Kremp’s Flowers, Wawa, the Willow Grove Mall, Penn Charter School, etc. – to give the show a feeling of authenticity?

Totally.  It’s important to nobody but me.  I’ve gotten into such legal rigmarole, writing so many letters, that people go, “Just don’t name it Wawa.  Just name it the Gas & Sip, or something.”  To me, that’s what makes this show.  If I’m going to embrace the fact that I’m doing a show about me growing up, I want every location to be the location I went to.  I didn’t realize that people would relate to it.  It’s a very small pocket of people I’m writing to, but they love that we do the Hiway Theater.  They love that they had a keg party in Alverthorpe Park.  Because, growing up, it’s like, “We did that!”  I didn’t realize that other people would be like, “I totally relate to these locations and it makes it extra special for me.”  I just did it because I wanted to embrace the concept of the show.

The show is kind of vague about when it takes place – incidents happen from throughout the 80s – do you have a specific time period in mind when it happens?

Yeah.  Nineteen-Eighty-something.  (laughs)  Anything from January 1, 1980 to December 31, 1989.  That was the concept of the show.  I built the whole show around that concept of nineteen-eighty-something, because I knew it would free me up to tell the stories that I loved and not be constrained to a time period.  Also, this is a show about memories.  About popping in videotapes and playing a random day from your childhood and not remembering when exactly it was.  Everything now is like timestamps.  Even your location is stamped.  On these VHS tapes I have, I have no concept of how old I was, what the year was, what the month was, even what grade I’m in.  I don’t even know.  So that’s the concept of the show.  And frankly, the studio was really confused by it.  They insisted the show be set in 1985.  In the pilot, our compromise was I gave a month and a date, but I never said the year, because they really just didn’t understand nineteen-eighty-something.  It wasn’t until about ten episodes in when I was just had free reign to explore the 80s as a time period that they were like, “Oh, we totally get why you did it.”  Frankly, it’s the only reason the show’s still on the air, I believe.

Troy Gentile, Sean Giambrone and Hayley Orrantia star in “The Goldbergs.”

Although the adults in the cast are all pretty well known, you took a chance to ride the series on fairly unknown actors as the kids.  How did you cast everybody and what are they like to work with?

Two of the three kids had never even been on a set before.  They were so new and so young.  That’s what I wanted.  I wanted just the authenticity of me and my friends.  We weren’t LA kids.  A lot of the actors from LA are very polished and have been doing it for years and years.  They come in and they just feel like robots.  I didn’t want actors.  I wanted real people that you would watch and relate to.  Sean [Giambrone, who plays Adam] is just a kid from Chicago who had done one commercial.  Leslie Litt, who does casting, saw the commercial and said, “This kid, I think he’s cute.  I’ve got a good feeling about him.”  Haley [Orrantia], who plays Erica, had been on X-Factor.  She just put herself on tape, taped herself off her iPhone and sent it in.   We just saw her natural gift and ability to do comedy.  Troy [Gentile, who plays Barry] had been doing it since he was a kid, but is just such a ball of energy that he was really the only choice for Barry.  There was no one else even in contention.

Hayley Orrantia stars in “The Goldbergs.”

Patton Oswalt has such a great, distinctive voice.  How did he become the voice of the series?

He’s my favorite standup.  He does a lot of geek comedy.  I don’t think anyone else does [things] quite like [he does].  No one else does a routine on being a Star Trek fan in college and arguing with a professor.  When I heard his standup it kind of blew my mind.  I was like, if I were a standup, this is the kind of material I’d be doing.  We have such similar interests.  I’m not an actor, so when it came to doing the voiceover I am like, who is the voice of me?  The only choice I had was Patton.  I’m like, Patton Oswalt.  He’s a grown geek man-child, just like me.   (laughs)  And of course, had so much voiceover experience.  He was the lead in Ratatouille.  It was the perfect fit.

Obviously there are so many interesting things that happened in the 1980s.  What are some of the one that you haven’t hit upon that you still want to cover in The Goldbergs?

That’s a good question.  I’m trying to think.  Live Aid.  Live Aid was, of course, in Philly.  That was a big deal.

I know.  I was there.

Oh, wow.  (laughs)  We always talked about Live Aid.  Wrestlemania.  I think I went to Wrestlemania IV.  Just these big moments from your childhood that you remember so vividly.  I’d still love to do an episode about [Michael Jackson’s] “Thriller,” which was a defining song from my childhood.  There’s definitely ones we always bring up and talk about.  Hands Across America we did this year.  We’ve been talking about that since day one.

Sean Giambrone stars in “The Goldbergs.”

What are some parts of the 1980s that you definitely don’t think would work in the world of the show?

(sighs)  Well, for every big, fun, splashy pop culture event that you remember, iconic events that you remember from then, there’s like The Challenger [the Space Shuttle which blew up soon after liftoff.]  I was in school watching that with everybody when it exploded.  We were sent home and we were all traumatized.  Again, the show has dramatic moments, and we often talk about these more dramatic things that you remember.  These experiences growing up.  Do they have a place in a show like this?  I think the one we did to the best effect was the Berlin Wall coming down.  I remember being in school when that happened.  Just such a memorable moment.  So, I think there are definitely heavier events, and I’d even talk about exploring those, as well.

If the show keeps going for several years, do you see the series eventually moving on to college, grunge, Doc Maartens and the 90s?

(laughs)  It’s up in the air right now.  There’s so much to mine from the 80s still.  Look, the show is about growing up and I grew up out of the 80s into the 90s.  I wouldn’t say it’s set in stone.  I wouldn’t be surprised if it happens.  We’re approaching season four and I haven’t even aged the kids and no one has even noticed.  (laughs)  So, I think it’s really just about the kind of stories we want to tell.  Once Eric and Barry are out of the house… look, I grew up.  People seem to be a little taken aback at how much Sean grew up, but those were the stories that excited me.  I grew up.  I went through puberty.  It was hard and difficult.  I was in high school.  I struggled.  These are stories I’m excited to tell.  I think a lot of shows, they run out of steam, but I’m still drawing on real life experiences.  This is me I’m writing about, literally.  All those things excite me.  So I guess the answer is, we’ll see.  Hopefully I’m on that long.  I’d love maybe to explore the 90s, eventually.

Copyright ©2016 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: March 8, 2016.

Photos ©2015-2016 Courtesy of ABC.

Lolo

LOLO (2016)

Starring Dany Boon, Julie Delpy, Vincent Lacoste, Karin Viard, Antoine Lounguine, Christophe Vandevelde, Elise Larnicol, Christophe Canard, Nicolas Wanczycki, Rudy Milstein, Didier Duverger, Xavier Alcan, Fabienne Galula, Juliette Lamet, René-Alban Fleury, Alexandra Oppo, Jessica Cressy, Bertrand Burgalat, Frédéric Beigbeder and Karl Lagerfeld.

Screenplay by Julie Delpy and Eugénie Grandval.

Directed by Julie Delpy.

Distributed by Film Rise.  100 minutes.  Not Rated.

There is a long history in French films of wild, broad comic farces, crazed explorations of human foibles and frailties delivered with a saucy wink.

French actress and writer/director Julie Delpy, while an extremely funny writer and actress who has become almost as well-known in the States (for films like the Before Sunset series, The Hoax, Broken Flowers and Avengers: Age of Ultron) as her native France, is not necessarily known for this kind of broad humor.  Her jokes – as shown in films like Before Sunset and 2 Days in Paris – tend to be more pointed, edgier, more indie friendly.

“I really wanted a broad farce,” Delpy told me in a recent interview.  “That’s what I was going for.  The film did really well in France, so I’m happy that’s what I did.  Very happy I did that, because I had never really done it….  Visually I tricked people into watching a film that’s pretty and glossy and everything is shiny and colorful….  Yet, the content of it is a little darker than the usual broad mainstream comedy.  It’s a mix of both.”

You know this is going to be a bit of a different film for Delpy from the animated opening credits, which play over a wonderfully kitschy Andy Williams version of 60s swinger “Music To Watch Girls By.”

Delpy plays Violette, a hip and neurotic Paris-based PR woman in the fashion industry.  While on vacation in Biarritz with her cynical, free-spirited best friend Ariane (Karin Viard), Violette meets Jean-Rene (played by popular French comedian Dany Boon) a local “hick” who knows Ariane (talk about an odd meet cute – he literally drops a big fish on her).  It’s dislike at first sight, but Ariane talks her into having a little no-strings vacation affair.

Violette figures that will be all their little fling is, but it turns out that they have real strong sexual chemistry.  Even though she thinks he’s a little funny looking and a bit of a rube, that connection, plus his unforced sweetness, gets her to thinking more seriously about the guy.  Then when it turns out that he is being transferred to Paris for his computer job, she finds herself genuinely excited by the idea of him being around.

Of course, back home things are different.  Real life abounds.  And the biggest threat to their burgeoning relationship is Lolo (Vincent Lacoste of Hippocrates), her 20-ish grown son who decides that Jean-Rene is not worthy of his mother.

Children of divorce often resist new men in their mother’s life, but Lolo takes it to a whole new level.  He starts out just subtly sabotaging the man, but quickly ramps up the antagonistic campaign, putting together a series of plans to destroy the man’s profession, his reputation, his health, and his relationship.

Jean-Rene, being a good-hearted sort, tries to build bridges with Lolo.  By the time he figures out the extent the kid is willing to go to ruin him, he has been nearly completely ruined.  The crazier the stories are, the more Violette refuses to believe that Lolo could be responsible for such acts.

Delpy told me in our interview that while she was writing Lolo, she kept thinking of the old 50s Patty McCormack thriller The Bad Seed, about a family who did not realize that their adorable little girl is a budding sociopath.  It’s an interesting idea for a comedy – Robin Williams’ World’s Greatest Dad also successfully trod on similar thematic turf, though that film was more blatantly dark.

Some of the later scenes of Lolo feel a bit over the top, but that is really the point of a farce.  Delpy’s sharp writing and always improving directorial skills save it from going too far though.  Also, an extremely strong Gallic cast – Boon and Lacoste are very funny in their roles and Viard steals almost every scene she is in – makes Lolo a very fun, if slightly inessential, romp.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2016 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: March 11, 2016.

Julie Delpy wrote, directed and stars in “Lolo.”

Julie Delpy

On Both Sides of the Camera

by Jay S. Jacobs

Actress Julie Delpy has been a familiar face on screen – both in her native France and in the United States – for well over 20 years.  In fact, as the daughter of French theatrical stars Albert Delpy and Marie Pillet, she has been working on stage and screen since she was a little girl.  However, now she has been spending much of the last decade behind the camera.

Delpy was really first noticed in the States (other than perhaps in a bit part in the hit film Europa, Europa) when she won the lead role in Krzysztof Kieslowski’s White, part of his acclaimed colors trilogy – the other two titles were Red and Blue.  Soon she was in the States, making a bunch of English language movies like The Three Musketeers, Killing Zoe and An American Werewolf in Paris.

However, she really started turning heads with Richard Linklater’s 1995 film Before Sunrise.  The movie, about a French girl named Celine and an American boy named Jesse (played by Ethan Hawke) who spend a night walking around Vienna, talking and getting to know each other, was a critical favorite.  It was also Delpy’s first experience as a writer, an experience that opened her career up immeasurably.

While Before Sunrise did not become a huge hit at the time, video and cable grew the cult audience to the point that they were able to make the 2004 sequel Before Sunset, which also shared critical acclaim, and this time around was a fairly big hit to boot.  The third film in the series, again at a nine-year interval, was the 2013 film Before Midnight.  Together, the Before movies make up one of the most important film series ever.

It also grew Delpy’s love of writing and her desire to try directing.  She achieved this dream (not including a couple of short films) with a barely remembered French film called Looking for Jimmy in 2002.  However, for the last decade she has thrown herself into filmmaking.  First was the popular 2007 comedy 2 Days in Paris, in which she and Adam Goldberg played a squabbling couple visiting her parents in France.  That film was followed by the 2012 sequel 2 Days in New York, in which Chris Rock took over as her character’s current relationship.  Between those films she made the creepy period drama The Countess and the coming-of-age drama Skylab.  She has written and starred in all the films she has directed (though she only had a supporting role in Skylab.)

Her latest film is a return to her native France, and it is her wildest film yet.  In Lolo she plays a fortyish fashion industry PR person who finds herself falling in love with a goofy guy that she met on holiday, but not realizing that the relationship is being sabotaged viciously by her grown son.  Lolo pairs Delpy with some of the greatest names in French comic filmmaking, including Dany Boon (Welcome to the Sticks), Karin Viard (The Chef’s Wife) and young up-and-comer Vincent Lacoste (Hippocrates: Diary of a French Doctor).

A couple of days before the New York premiere of Lolo, I sat down with Delpy to discuss her new movie and her career both in front of and behind the camera.

Dany Boon, Julie Delpy and Vincent Lacoste star in “Lolo.”

Nice speaking with you again, we did an interview years ago when Before Sunset was coming out. 

That was a long time ago, yeah.

This is your sixth film as a director, but I believe this may be the first time that you’ve directed completely in your native French – I know a certain amount of 2 Days in Paris was also done in French and I’m not sure about Skylab.

Skylab is in French as well.  That wasn’t a comedy, more like a coming of age movie.

Why did you decide this project would work better in French?

You know, just the way I started writing it.  My co-writer is French.  The producer that we started talking with.  It was generated from a conversation with the producer of Skylab, Michael Gentile.  We started talking about making a French film and I never even thought about writing it in English.  It’s a great thing to accept the fact that you’re making a French film and go all the way with it and make a French film.  (laughs)

Both as an actress and a director, what are the differences between making a French film and an American film?

Both are a different experience, I think.  The way crews work in France, it’s a different life on set.  You have long lunch breaks where you pour wine.  (laughs)  Choosing the catering is very important to everyone.  It has to be the best food in town.  That’s the goal in every French film.  (laughs again)  You usually get high-A quality restaurant French food on set, which is really nice.  I would say the food is mainly the difference.  (continues laughing)  Pretty much, if you had a good crew in the US and a good crew in France you get a good result.  It’s great to work with people.  The food is the big difference.

Vincent Lacoste and Julie Delpy star in “Lolo.”

As the son of a divorced mother, I’m very familiar with the whole idea of the kids not giving a new guy a chance.  Of course Lolo takes that to a whole new extreme.  Your own son is obviously much younger than Lolo is, so how did you and Eugénie Grandval come up with this idea?

You know, the film has nothing autobiographical in it.  There is nothing further from Lolo than my son.  He has so much empathy for others.  He always looks at the smallest kid in the classroom and goes and protects him.  He’s like the good kid.  I’m very lucky and I intend to keep him that way.  (laughs)  But, people change, you never know.  I think Lolo is like, there was this film in the 50s called The Bad Seed.  [ed. note: That film starred Patty McCormack as an angelic looking little girl who was actually a psychopath.]  I always thought of that film when I was writing this.  What did these people do wrong in The Bad Seed to have a daughter that is so mischievous and evil?  She kills the cat.  Really, really bad stuff.

They probably did nothing wrong…

You never know 100% what you get as a parent.  You can do everything right and something comes off wrong.  It’s always a question you ask yourself as a parent: Am I doing everything right?  Is telling a kid everyday that he’s the greatest thing in the world really the answer?  Definitely putting down your children is bad.  That’s definitely bad.  That will never make someone happy, someone that functions happily in life.  But is putting people on a pedestal – to the point of turning them into people that do not understand that they are not the greatest thing in the universe – is that good or bad?  I don’t know.  Even myself, I wonder.  The way I was raised, my parents always took my side.  It was an extreme.  Then I realized, oh, I had to face many things from being an only child and being very much loved by my parents.

Dany Boon and Julie Delpy star in “Lolo.”

Your writing has always had a strong humorous content, but this is probably the most blatantly comic film you’ve written yet.  Were you looking to do more of a broad farce with this film?

Yeah, I really wanted a broad farce.  That’s what I was going for.  The film did really well in France, so I’m happy that’s what I did.  Very happy I did that, because I had never really done it.  My films always have this indie vibe, especially in the way it is filmed.  In this film, it’s not a complete mainstream movie because it goes a little bit too far, sometimes, you know?  Visually I tricked people into watching a film that’s pretty and glossy and everything is shiny and colorful.  And the camera doesn’t move too much, it doesn’t make you sick.  Yet, the content of it is a little darker than the usual broad mainstream comedy.  It’s a mix of both.

You are both star and director.  While on the set, what is it like to juggle the two positions?

It’s always going back and forth.  It’s sometimes quite exhausting.  But the truth and secret is a lot of very good, thorough preparation.  As a director, with the crew, with as many people as you can, with the first AD [assistant director], have a perfect shot list, everything is pre-planned.  Everything is thought in advance.  Every prop is pre-picked.  Everything is picked in advance for every scene.  And also you know your lines in advance as an actress.  So, it’s to be very prepared.

Vincent Lacoste, Julie Delpy and Dany Boon star in “Lolo.”

You have been doing more and more directing over the years.  I believe in recent years the only role you have done simply as an actress is Avengers – Age of Ultron.  At this point is your writing and directing more vital to you than your acting? 

Last year I did a Todd [Welcome to the Dollhouse, Happiness] Solondz film [called Weiner-Dog] that was in Sundance and that is coming up.  So, I did work with other people.  I love working with other people, if it is the right people.  I find it a lot of fun and in a way, very relaxing.

Dany is such a terrific comic actor.  Did you plan the role for him?  Was it tough to keep a straight face working up against him?

He is indeed a fantastic actor.  He’s a great guy to work with.  A real sweetheart, and a really good comedian.  Really fun to be around.  I wrote it with him in mind.  I’m lucky that he agreed to do it.  90% of the time, he doesn’t do films [for others].  He mostly does his own films.  So I was very lucky he agreed to do my film.

I really had enjoyed Vincent in Hippocrates as well.  How did he get involved and what was he like to work with?

I worked with him on Le Skylab.  He played one of the cousins.  He is a fantastic actor.  I was really, really impressed.  He was 16, he turned 17 on Skylab, and I was impressed by how professional he was.  How serious and focused he was for his age.  Really a guy that cares about movies, cares about his craft.  It’s really great to work with people like that.  It’s funny, because even though I make comedy [and] it all seems crazy and playful, I really like people who are very serious about their work.  I take my work seriously, even if I make comedies.  I like to really work hard and do the best I can.

Julie Delpy and Karin Viard star in “Lolo.”

Karin Viard was also in Skylab, what do you feel she added to everything? She had a smaller role, but it was a very important one.

I told her when I was writing, “It’s not going to be the lead, because I can’t have too much going on at all times.  But it’s going to be a very, very noticeable role.  It’s not going to be something you’re going to forget.  It’s not the kind of part where you have ten scenes but no one remembers you.”  (laughs)  She has like eight scenes, but you remember each of them.  My dad [French actor Albert Delpy] always says, “You gave her the best lines.  You didn’t give it to yourself.  You gave it to Karin.”  I accept that.  I wanted the really fun, fun friend, a very memorable supporting role.  When she read it, she was like, “Great!  It’s so much fun.  I’m very excited to do it.”

I was hearing that you are working on a streaming series called On the Verge.  I know it’s in the really early phases, but what can we expect from that?

You know, I hope something and maybe nothing.  It depends.  Streaming and stuff, they make decisions, and I have very little to do with the decisions they make.  If they like it, they’ll go for it.  If they don’t, they don’t.

What else do you have coming up?

I wrote a drama that I will be directing, I think in the UK, called Zoe.  That’s my next film.  I also have a film called A Dazzling Display of Splendor, which is a very, very fun epic about actors and moviemaking.  It’s really, really sweet and fun and family and funny.  I’m hoping to make [it] right after Zoe.

Julie Delpy and Dany Boon star in “Lolo.”

I have to tell you that I think that the Before Sunrise series is one of the most important film series in history.  Obviously, you’ve been working on and off on that series for over 20 years now. 

Actually for 23 years.

Looking back, what has it been like to be part of such a groundbreaking and beloved group of films? 

You know, I put so much of my romantic ideals in the first film.  It’s a weird thing, because when you write something, they take it away from you, in a way.  It changed me as an individual, as a romantic person.  I put all my sweet romantic young woman ideas in that first film.  Then the second film, I put more of my young romantic ideas in.  The third film, it was a little more bitter and sad.  It’s an interesting evolution.  It’s a very personal film for Ethan [Hawke] and I, and Richard [Linklater].  Ethan and I are really growing with the characters.  The films are almost, I think, more personal to Ethan and I than anyone else.  And Richard, obviously.

Did you ever have any idea they’d catch on like they did?

It’s been an interesting journey.  Not always easy, because sometimes when you write things down, you take them away from you, in a way.  It becomes everyone’s.  The idea of writing is weird.  You share with people, and at the same time, it’s not yours anymore.  A lot of my romantic ideas went into the first film and maybe took away from my romanticism.  (laughs)  I wasn’t credited [as a screenwriter] on the first film, so it was hard to take in the fact that all those very romantic moods and stuff came from me, but no one knows they did.

But you did get the credit as a writer for the second and third films.

Yeah, afterwards.  Thank God.  Thank God.

Julie Delpy and Karin Viard star in “Lolo.”

Since you have worked so closely with Richard and Ethan over the years, how exciting was it to see how well Boyhood did last year?

Oh, that was great.  That was great.  What a beautiful film.  I was very happy for Richard and Ethan.  And Patricia [Arquette], who I love.

When I last talked to you, Before Sunset was just coming out and you told me that you didn’t think it was likely that a third film would be made in the series.  Obviously that did happen, and we are way too early to be thinking of a fourth film, but do you think it is possible we will check in again with Celine and Jesse around 2022?

The truth is, I have no idea.  I really have no idea.  I really don’t know if we’ll do another one.  I have no idea.

Copyright ©2016 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: March 11, 2016.

Photos ©2016 Courtesy of Filmrise. All rights reserved.