The Envelope, Daily Press, February 2015

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SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2015

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THEENVELOPE.COM

WHAT’S INSIDE

THE QUOTE

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JULIANNE MOORE

She’s seen as the nominee most deserving of a catch-up Oscar for her role in “Still Alice,” a stark look at Alzheimer’s.

STEVE CARELL

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BRADLEY COOPER

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‘BIRDMAN’ FLAPS

36

Think you know Mr. Nice Guy? Mr. Comedian? Meet the dark and scary man in “Foxcatcher” and think again.

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His acting career has gone from “how cute” (his family) to “sexiest man alive” (People) to “unparalleled” (Eastwood).

Bob D’Amico ABC via Getty Images

Who’s your favorite Oscar host and why?

“Billy Crystal became the most brilliant Oscar host in my memory. He brought an element of musicality to it.

It felt like he was one of them, and yet he could parody movies and songs. He always had a twinkle in his eye, and it felt accessible. … We’ve had to abandon great ideas because Billy Crystal came up with them a decade ago. He’s really the great archetype.

— Neil Patrick Harris 2015 Oscar host

Michael Keaton and director Alejandro G. Iñárritu took pains to get Riggan just right.

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Also 10

ROSAMUND PIKE

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‘BOYHOOD’ LESSONS

34

BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

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“Gone Girl” director noted those still waters.

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The director and cast recount a life journey.

The “Imitation Game” star shows he’s a fanboy too.

OSCAR SHOW TO AIR ON ABC The 87th Academy Awards will be presented Feb. 22 at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. ABC will broadcast the ceremony, hosted by Neil Patrick Harris, beginning at 4 p.m. Pacific time (7 p.m. Eastern).

HISTORY IN SHARP FOCUS

“Selma” doesn’t airbrush the flaws of 1960s icons.

C A P T I O N L E A D I N : Cutline goes here.

Photographs, from top, by

Carolyn Cole Los Angeles Times; Kirk McKoy Los Angeles Times; Carolyn Cole Los Angeles Times; Ricardo DeAratanha Los Angeles Times

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SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2015

THEENVELOPE.COM THE CONTENDERS

THE DRUMBEAT NEVER SLOWS

By Janet Kinosian

T

he life of an Oscar nominee is a busy one, indeed. Veteran actor J.K. Simmons had just flown in from Atlanta, where he’s filming “The Accountant” with Ben Affleck and Anna Kendrick, and was having a quick breakfast on a January late morning near his Studio City home while nursing a lingering cold.

The odds-on favorite to win the supporting actor Oscar for his portrayal of a ferociously manipulative jazz instructor in the best picture nominee “Whiplash,” he’s already scooped up a number of statuettes for the role, including a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award, which he won not long after this conversation.

He was set for an early flight the next morning to New York to prep for and host NBC’s “Saturday Night Live.” In the two weeks that follow, he’ll have gone back to Atlanta for more filming, returned to L.A. for the Oscar nominees luncheon and then to London for the British Academy Film Awards.

But you (mostly) won’t hear him complaining. “It’s to the point now I don’t have time to even watch my ballgames,” he says.

“But it’s all good; well, more than good, really.”

Do you remember your initial reaction to the “Whiplash” script by director Damien Chazelle?

I remember it much more explicitly than I remember almost anything. I got it in an email from Jason Reitman. From that first page I felt in my being something extraordinary; I get tingles talking about it. It was — is — so amazing on paper. It just leaps off the page. It’s hilarious, harrowing, mature, thorough. It’s just an amazing, amazing piece of writing.

I’d imagine, since you don’t appear to be an angry guy, it’d be hard physically going from 0 to 1,000 volts to 0 and back up again constantly?

The only way that was hard was techni-

cally, vocally. I started out in theater and I know how to use my voice, and I was a singer and all that, but this wasn’t something where I could apply any kind of vocal technique or be careful about anything. I just had to go insane and scream from the bottom of my shoes. And I couldn’t do that all day, every day for three days in a row, so Damien wisely scheduled the days so that if I was screaming a lot on Monday I wouldn’t have to scream again until Thursday.

J.K. SIMMONS

says he found the “Whiplash” script “extraordinary” when he read it.

What’s it like seeing yourself terrorize someone in panorama on-screen? That must be an odd experience the first time you see the film.

Except for some chunks in the editing room, the first time I saw it was at Cannes.

It’s funny. My wife and I debated whether our daughter, who’d recently turned 13, if it was appropriate for her to watch it, partly because of the language, obviously, but also just because of the psychological terror of it. We decided it would be OK. So it was just my daughter and I in the car, and I said, “Mom and I talked about it and we decided that it’s OK for you to see the movie when we go to New York.” And she said, “I don’t think I want to see it. I heard you’re really, really mean in it.” But we all did see it as a family together in New York. I’ve seen it now four times all the way through.

Speaking of New York, you’re hosting “Saturday Night Live” [Jan. 31]. How did that gig come about?

When they first approached me, I thought it was amazingly cool, but I’m doing this movie in Atlanta and I’m working that week. So I said I’d love to, but I can’t. I went home and told my wife and she lost her mind and said you can’t not do it. Our kids just recently started watching it, and they were losing their minds, and so I called my agent back and said, “Let’s see if we can make it work.” ... I’m 60, so I remember Season 1.

calendar@latimes.com

Kirk McKoy Los Angeles Times

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SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2015

THEENVELOPE.COM THE CONTENDERS

A SHINING KNIGHTLEY

By Randee Dawn

K

eira Knightley has been in the Hollywood spotlight for years, but arguably 2014 was the year she was not just seen but really heard. She acquitted herself nicely as a singer in “Begin Again,” earned a fourth Golden Globe nomination and a second Oscar nomination for “The Imitation Game,” and made headlines by taking a stand for feminism in words and deeds (like the topless unretouched photo of herself published in November in Interview). The Envelope spoke with the now mom-to-be about her changing roles, both on screen and in real life.

Does it surprise you to hear you’ve been acting for more than half of your life?

No! I don’t remember wanting to be anything else. … For a while, I probably burned myself out by doing end-to-end-toend jobs because I was so terrified it would stop — because it does, and it still may do.

I have to pace myself. You have to try and grow and change, otherwise your audience won’t be interested.

In “Imitation Game,” you play Joan Clarke, the female cryptologist on Alan Turing’s code-breaking team. He’s gay, which is then illegal in England, she’s devoted to a career she’ll have to give up if she gets married, so they get engaged.

Can there be marriages of the mind?

I definitely know a couple of people where I think that’s what happened. As you go along, partnership becomes incredibly important, and people often choose that kind of partnership over necessarily a romantic sort of love. I found that completely understandable.

It makes sense that Turing’s story drives “The Imitation Game,” but a whole movie about Clarke would be terrific too. Do you think we’re in an upswing for unexplored female stories?

No. There are very, very few stories told.

Female stories and female voices are very often missed out on, completely. Very often in every section of culture women are lost; every actress will say the exact same thing to you. We’re all looking for these interesting, inspiring, complex creatures … but they’re very difficult to find.

So what should you be doing as an actress to rectify that?

It’s got to come from female writers, from female producers, from female direc-

tors — they’re the ones with the passion to tell stories and go out and get the money.

Possibly I should be throwing my hat in that ring. But it means putting the producer’s hat on, not just the actor’s. Maybe that’s something I should do and will do.

But I’m very lazy.

You made headlines recently for talking about feminism, and a topless photo raised issues about women’s bodies. Are you more vocal now?

Up until 2011, I would talk about feminism quite a lot in interviews and absolutely get laughed at by female journalists. On one hand, I completely understand that; it’s very difficult for anyone who models or objectifies their body to talk about feminism. On the other hand, you go, “No, there isn’t equal pay, there are horrendous domestic abuse problems in England and America, and every woman has a right to say that there aren’t enough female stories.” It’s incredibly important for media to continue the discussion and really push for it and don’t say, “That’s passé. Oh, no, that’s a problem of the past.”

So are you having a boy or a girl?

Nice try!

I ask because I’m wondering what you’ll teach him or her about gender roles?

I think it’s very important to raise boys who are feminists and very important to raise girls who don’t expect Prince Charming and allow men to be emotional and weak at points and strong at points. We’re looking for equality and not gender stereotypes. But the real answer is … I don’t know.

It’s one of the thousand million intimidating things I’m thinking about lately.

calendar@latimes.com

Jay L. Clendenin Los Angeles Times

“THE IMITATION GAME’S” Keira Knightley has strong views on feminism

and a lot of questions about motherhood, which will soon be a new role for her.

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SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2015

THEENVELOPE.COM

THE QUEEN OF REALISM

Julianne Moore’s particular talent of conveying all the still waters running deep beneath the surface in ‘Still Alice’ translates into a good chance that, after four previous Oscar nominations, she’ll win this time

By Randee Dawn

N

EW YORK — Early in “Still Alice,” Julianne Moore — as wife, mother and professor Alice Howland — faces a series of cognitive tests administered by her neurologist. She’s begun forgetting things ranging from simple words to her location, and mistakenly self-diagnoses a brain tumor. But the scene isn’t about those tests or about her dawning realization that, rather than a tumor, she may have earlyonset Alzheimer’s. It’s about Moore’s visage.

The shot remains on her for four solid minutes, an eternity in moviemaking but an easy choice for Wash Westmoreland (who co-wrote and directed with partner Richard Glatzer).

“Julianne Moore is the queen of realism,” he says in a phone interview. “She was determined not to do a false note in the performance. We didn’t want to slip into medical drama, which we’ve seen many times. Instead, it’s all about what happened in her face.”

Moore had no idea Westmoreland and Glatzer would choose that single, unbroken take. “When I saw the cut of me in the doctor’s office, I was, like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ It was like a present,” she says as she glances out the bar window of the Gansevoort Meatpacking NYC hotel, sipping her tea and nibbling the peel of a lemon.

“Still Alice” is the story of a woman in her prime whose expertise in linguistics has propelled her into a professorship at

Photographs by Sony Pictures Classics

A FOUR-MINUTE SCENE at the beginning of “Still Alice” is riveting, show-

ing just Julianne Moore’s face as her character performs a series of cognitive tests and slowly begins to realize that she may have early-onset Alzheimer’s.

Columbia University — but who is then diagnosed with the degenerative brain disorder. It could have been mere movie-of-theweek pulp in lesser hands, but Westmoreland and Glatzer put Moore’s chiseled, ivory features and clever, knowing eyes front-and-center and never looked back.

No wonder she’s been earning critical raves and industry awards since the drama premiered in September at the Toronto International Film Festival.

And with five Academy Award nominations to date, starting in 1998, there’s a good chance this role will be the one to earn

Moore a long-awaited Oscar statuette at tonight’s ceremony.

Raves have even come from Alzheimer’s experts. “What they depicted was chillingly realistic,” says Gary Small, a member of the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America’s medical and scientific advisory board and a professor of psychiatry and aging at UCLA’s Semel Institute. “To me, it was extremely realistic: Her moments of confusion, the way she wanted to compensate for her problems, her fear of other people finding out was so realistic.”

“Alice” is not a horror movie, insists Moore, who’s seen it referred to that way.

But she acknowledges that the disease (which affects about 5 million Americans; 200,000 of whom have the early-onset version) is uniquely frightening.

“We have a pretty firm grasp that the physical is temporal,” she says. “We see ourselves growing up as children, we know what happens to our parents — that’s a natural evolution. But at the heart, we feel the true self is the inner self. When we feel there’s a possibility that we could lose control of how we experience and remember things, how we navigate things, that’s absolutely terrifying. That feels like a true loss of self — your secret self is your inner self.”

Yet the film takes a bold step in asserting that all versions of the self are valid. As she’s starting to lose her grip, Alice makes a video on her computer, providing careful instructions to her later, more debilitated self on how to take enough pills to commit suicide. As time passes, the less-capable Alice finds the video and begins to follow the instructions — but Moore convinces viewers that she’s doing it on a kind of autopilot: Someone she trusts is giving her directions. There’s no sense that the later

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SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2015

THEENVELOPE.COM

Carolyn Cole Los Angeles Times

JULIANNE MOORE says that when she viewed the long take of her as Alice at the doctor’s office, “I was, like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ It was like a present.”

Alice actually wants to end it all.

“You’re watching someone living in all her permutations,” says Moore. “She’s chosen to live through the wonderful things and the difficult things. What does it mean to live and be present?”

It’s one of the tougher areas the film touches on: Does the all-there version of Alice have the right to tell the more regressed one that she needs to end her life?

“It’s a very complex situation,” says Small.

“There are states with laws about assisted suicide for cancer or something that’s imminent, but with Alzheimer’s it’s not so clear.”

During her extensive research (which included visiting Alzheimer’s patients), the idea that a person’s essence remains, even in the darkest throes of the disease, left a lasting impression on Moore. “The notion that someone is obliterated by the disease — I didn’t find that to be true. I’m not say-

ing the loss isn’t tremendous, and there is a lot that disappears, but a sense of who that person is or was always permeated.”

Hence, the true meaning of the title: Through it all, Alice remains still … Alice.

But in the end, it takes a particular kind of talent to bring it all to the surface — including all of the still waters running deep beneath that surface.

From the start, Westmoreland knew he had the right actress for all the Alices to

come. That four-minute take in the doctor’s office? He says there were four other takes just as spot-on that could have been used.

But that’s Moore, he says, the queen of realism and of nailing it right away. “Some actors you get a performance from stitching together a quilt,” he says. “With Julie, the whole bedspread is already there.”

calendar@latimes.com

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SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2015

THEENVELOPE.COM ON WRITING

BY GRAHAM MOORE >>>‘THE IMITATION GAME’

THE KEY TO ALAN TURING

I

n a sense, I’ve been writing “The Imitation Game” since I was 14. Or at least, I’ve spent my whole life since the age of 14 hoping and praying that somebody would let me do it. The craziest part? Somebody actually did.

I first heard the story of Alan Turing when I was a teenager. But here’s the thing about my teenage years, and I’m not going to sugarcoat this: I was not cool. I was not even a little bit cool. I wore an oversize “X-Files” T-shirt to school almost every day. I had a few friends — emphasis on “few,” please — and I loved them, but we were a very motley bunch of outsiders.

Some of us were gay, some were straight, but most of us wore nail polish. (I certainly did.) Occasionally, lipstick and eyeliner.

We loved theater and movies, literature and computers. I went to space camp over the summer. I went to a camp one year completely devoted to computer programming. I spent two months in a poetry workshop on the Wellesley campus. This was Chicago in the 1990s, a cultural moment in which the idea that my friends and I would go in drag to school dances, obsessively re-read David Mamet, and still learn to code in C++ — it’s an old computer programming language, don’t even ask — seemed terribly fun, even if to everyone else it was pretty deeply weird.

Anyhow, it was at computer camp that I first heard the story of Alan Turing. But it was more like a legend, passed around the flickering campfire light from programmer to programmer. Did you know that the man who secretly invented the computer was gay? Or that during World War II, he was recruited by MI6 to break Nazi codes? Which he did by building this revolutionary machine, thus winning the

Kirk McKoy Los Angeles Times

GRAHAM MOORE was so inspired by code-breaker Alan Turing that he felt compelled to write “Imitation Game.”

war for the Allies? Only, it was all classified afterward? And then, when the government found out he was gay, he was arrested, persecuted by the country he’d just saved from Nazi rule, until he finally committed suicide?

No, I didn’t know any of that. But once I heard the story, I wanted to learn more. I needed to learn everything I could about him. Alan Turing was an outsider’s outsider — perhaps the most brilliant scientist of his generation, a social outcast who produced theories decades ahead of their time. A gay man who was able to keep secrets for the government so well precisely because he’d been forced to spend his entire life keeping his sexuality secret from a world in which a kiss between two men was literally punishable by two years in prison. For a weird kid like myself, who never felt like he belonged or fit in, Alan Turing wasn’t just an inspiration — he was a patron saint.

(As a Jew, my mother would be aghast

to hear me describe anyone as a saint, but you get the idea.)

So now we cut ahead a few decades. I became a writer instead of a programmer.

I published a mystery novel. I worked for a season on a sitcom. Things were going well, but there was always one story I wanted to tell: The campfire legend that had gotten me through teenager-dom.

Somehow, even though Turing’s story had been told beautifully in books and plays, it had never made it to the screen. It was shocking to me — how come no one had ever made a movie about this amazing man?

And that’s when, one night at a party, I met producers Nora Grossman and Ido Ostrowsky. It turned out that they’d just acquired the rights to Turing’s story, and after weeks of pleading, they agreed to let me write a script on spec. They then introduced me to Teddy Schwarzman, who brought the savvy and the resources to make the film. Then, Teddy introduced me

to Morten Tyldum, a once-in-a-generation filmmaker who understood the movie I’d always dreamed of making even better than I had. Then, Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, the rest of our cast, our passionate crew, and it felt as if our little band of committed weirdos kept growing in size. And we were all there because we were passionate about the same thing: telling Alan Turing’s story.

When I think about our movie, I sometimes like to think that maybe there’s a kid out there somewhere like me. Someone who doesn’t feel like she belongs. Someone who feels different. And that maybe, if we’re all really lucky, she’ll see our movie.

And she’ll feel a little bit less alone. And she’ll know that even though she’s not like everyone else, she can still go out and create something amazing.

And then I hope that many years from now, I’ll get to write a movie about her.

envelope@latimes.com

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SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2015

THEENVELOPE.COM ON WRITING

BY ANTHONY MCCARTEN >>>“THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING”

HOW IT ALL CAME TO BE

I

n 1988, along with 10 million others, I spent several days trying to decipher, decode and demystify “A Brief History of Time” by professor Stephen Hawking, the world-renowned physicist.

Failed.

Reading is not the same thing as understanding, and the professor did a fine job of making all 10 million of us feel simultaneously stupid and grateful, blissfully bamboozled, in awe and inept, shunted to the threshold of the incomprehensible to ponder the very, very big from a vantage of feeling very, very small.

What an icon Hawking is — a dramatis persona from writer’s heaven. His theories about time and space had deservedly made him famous, but it is his decade-ondecade outliving of a diagnosis of motor neuron disease (a type of ALS) and his ability to maintain his curiosity and sense of humor that turned him into a hero. In one man, here is an unprecedented juxtaposition of extraordinary mental prowess and extraordinary physical incapacity.

Back in 1988, when he told us that the universe was far more mysterious than we ever suspected, the world realized it had found a symbol for scientific genius that rivaled Albert Einstein.

Someone will make a wonderful movie about this man one day, I mused, never imagining that I would ever have any role to play in this.

In 2004, I reentered the Hawking universe from a different angle when I read the autobiography of Stephen’s first wife, Jane Hawking, “Traveling to Infinity.” As I turned her pages, the publicly known facts of the icon in the wheelchair faded to reveal a one-of-a-kind love story, the tale

Kirk McKoy Los Angeles Times

ANTHONY McCARTEN was pulled into Stephen Hawking’s orbit in 1988 by the book “A Brief History of Time.”

of a courageous young woman who fell in love with a young scientist at Cambridge University only to learn that he had been given only two years to live. Sure she had the strength to support Stephen during his ordeal, she agreed to marry him, but what transpired was an extraordinary 26-year union in which they explored the love of physics and the physics of love.

I was about a third of the way through Jane’s book when I felt an internal ratchetclick and resolved that I must catch the train to Cambridge, hometown to both Hawkings, and simply knock on Jane’s door and beg her to let me option the film rights to her book. To my eternal gratitude she let a stranger cross her threshold. She was encouraged enough by what I said that day to allow me to write a script, “then we shall talk again.” It was clear to both of us that she had stopped far short of granting me the rights I needed.

The years passed. With script in hand I knocked on a great many doors, but none opened. I was told there was little market for this kind of story. Why could no one perceive the remarkable, even unprecedented artistic opportunities here?

In 2009, I joined forces with producer Lisa Bruce, and, when Jane eventually signed over her book rights in 2012, we snared James Marsh (“Man on Wire”) to direct. Suddenly we were moving and moving fast. Eric Fellner, co-head of Britain’s Working Title, responded positively within 11 hours of being sent the script.

Eddie Redmayne quickly agreed to play Stephen and Felicity Jones to play Jane.

Filming began in Cambridge in October 2013.

One particular night of filming stands out in memory. We were staging Stephen and Jane’s first date — a re-creation of the 1963 May Ball for Cambridge undergradu-

ates. We had 300 extras in black tie and gowns, two bands, a carnival and a few thousand quid worth of fireworks ready to erupt in the cold autumn night.

And then the professor arrived. A staffer was dispatched to halt the professor beyond the edge of frame. This was narrowly accomplished. “Action!” James called. The music struck up, 150 couples began to waltz, gloved waiters served Champagne from silver trays, the bands played soft jazz until the sky suddenly filled with supernovae.

I was told later the professor smiled.

Perhaps, in that moment, he was young again, a nervous youth on his first date with the woman with whom he’d share half a life. Had I been at his ear I might have whispered: “Professor? That’s Hollywood.”

calendar@latimes.com

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SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2015

THEENVELOPE.COM

DAVID OYELOWO

and Carmen Ejogo play Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, below.

SAINTED SINNERS ‘Selma’ depicts civil rights icons as real people, flaws and all

By Lewis Beale

T

here’s a short scene in best picture nominee “Selma” about the events leading up to, and surrounding, the Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights marches of 1965 in which Coretta Scott King confronts her husband, Martin, about his suspected infidelities. “Do

you love me?” she asks, and he responds in the affirmative. “Do you love any of the others?” she then asks, and after a pause he acknowledges that there are indeed others by answering, “No.” It’s not a major moment in director Ava DuVernay’s movie, but it is in a sense an astonishing one. That’s because films about the civil rights movement have barely acknowledged the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s adulterous ways and have

mostly portrayed its activists as sexless and saintly.

Films about the movement “have made the representative black characters just such good, noble people,” says Allison Graham, author of “Framing the South: Hollywood, Television and Race During the Civil Rights Struggle.” “The movies don’t risk having a complicated, flawed black hero or heroine.”

Or, as DuVernay told an audience at

Photographs, from top, by Atsushi Nishijima Paramount Pictures; Morton Broffman Getty Images

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SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2015

THEENVELOPE.COM New York’s Urbanworld Film Festival, King “has been really homogenized, like a preaching statue, but he was a really radical thinker and a bad-ass brother.

We’re not seeing a lot of swagger in the nonviolent movement in most of the films about civil rights. There was a lot of swagger, a lot of bravery.”

That’s not the only thing that films about the movement have avoided. Although there have been numerous movies about race relations (“To Kill a Mockingbird,” “In the Heat of the Night,” etc.) and scores of documentaries about the civil rights era, narrative films about the struggle have been scarce.

When portraying the era, Hollywood has generally opted for a narrow range of stories: films about the 1956 Montgomery bus boycott (“The Long Walk Home,” “Boycott,” “The Rosa Parks Story”); about the 1964 murder of civil rights workers James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman (“Mississippi Burning,” “Murder in Mississippi”); and films in which a heroic white person is involved in the struggle (“Ghosts of Mississippi,” “Mississippi Burning,” “The Long Walk Home,” “The Help”).

In these films, “the full dimension of the black experience is not on display,” says Alexis Scott of Atlanta’s National Center for Civil and Human Rights. “It’s because of the people in charge of the money [in Hollywood] and what they think is the most dramatic aspect. I think what’s not portrayed is that these black characters were activists in the sense of making things happen and not just having things happen to them.”

With the exception of Spike Lee’s 1992 film, “Malcolm X,” there have been virtually no major movies about the black power experience and such charismatic figures as Stokely Carmichael (there was also the 1995 Mario Van Peebles film “Panther,” about the Black Panther Party, which tanked commercially).

Other than the 2002 TV movie “The Rosa Parks Story,” the role of such female activists as Fannie Lou Hamer has been mostly ignored, and no one has yet to fully tell the story of Viola Liuzzo, the white Detroit housewife who joined the Selma-to-Montgomery march and was killed by the Ku Klux Klan, though her involvement is included briefly in “Selma.”

The reason? “The bottom line is the bottom line,” says UCLA history professor Brenda Stevenson. The studios “are

Underwood Archives / Getty Images

ROSA PARKS, above, rides the

bus in Montgomery, Ala., in 1956. At left, Alabama state troopers observe the wrecked car of murdered Detroit housewife Viola Liuzzo in 1965.

Below, militants Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown in 1968.

William Lovelace Getty Images

going to look at what the audience wants to see, and we can see that Hollywood panders to Southern sentiment and a larger sentiment that can be deeply racist. A lot of the audience is more comfortable with

Associated Press

‘here is this heroic white person involved in the movement.’ ” “I don’t believe Hollywood is the vanguard of popular culture; it reflects the culture it is in,” adds American Film Insti-

tute historian Bob Birchard. At the time of the movement, “there weren’t many filmmakers with the black perspective, and they were channeled into blaxploitation pictures. Even today, part of the attention given to the recent ‘Django Unchained’ and ‘12 Years a Slave’ is that there just hasn’t been much in the way of a willingness to delve into the historical issues around slavery and Jim Crow.

“That said, there hasn’t been much bravery on the part of filmmakers dealing with issues like the Indian wars and the labor movement.”

Possibly the most egregious example of Hollywood’s reluctance when it comes to the civil rights movement is the 1988 Alan Parker film, “Mississippi Burning.”

A well-crafted movie about the search for the killers of three civil rights workers, it treated blacks as passive victims and the FBI — whose director, J. Edgar Hoover, was notorious for his hatred of, and attempts to undermine, MLK — as being in the vanguard of racial justice.

The film “treated the disappearance of three civil rights workers as a western and turned the FBI into great heroes, which they were not,” author Graham says, “and that set the stage for the movies that followed, where you had the white hero.”

It is for reasons such as these that DuVernay wanted to make “Selma,” if only because, as she says, black historical dramas “feel like medicine. I’m a person who doesn’t really like black historical dramas, so [in ‘Selma’] I was constantly changing the tropes you see in those movies, from the way they were lit and cut to the way people behave in the scenes.”

Though far from a blockbuster, audiences have responded in supportive numbers. Recent films about racial issues, especially those with black protagonists, have not achieved major commercial successes — “Malcolm X” grossed less than $50 million, and last season’s best picture Oscar winner, “12 Years a Slave,” earned just over $56 million.

“Selma,” with a $20 million production budget, has earned $46 million since its Christmas Day release. But “The Help,” with its white lead, topped $160 million.

“It’s box office; it’s all about the Benjamins,” says Scott. “There is the notion that [films about the movement] won’t have broad appeal, that only black people will be interested.”

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SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2015

THEENVELOPE.COM

REESE Witherspoon,

left, and Laura Dern were both emotionally touched by their roles in “Wild.”

Jay L. Clendenin Los Angeles Times

SCREENING ROOM OUTTAKES

MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS

BY REBECCA KEEGAN >>> Setting aside the perky, cute-girl persona that serves her so well on screen, Reese Witherspoon brings a gritty, stripped bare (literally and figuratively) performance to her role as Cheryl Strayed in the film “Wild.” An adaptation of Strayed’s bestselling 2012 memoir of her 1,100-mile solo hike on the Pacific Crest Trail, the film interweaves her struggles in the wilderness with her recollections of the painful and often reckless life she’s leaving behind. Laced through it all are poignant memories of her mother, Bobbi, played by Laura Dern. We spoke to Witherspoon and Dern at a recent Envelope Screening Series event. Here are excerpts from the conversation.

Reese, you bought this story with your own money after reading it before it was published. What was it that motivated you to do that?

Witherspoon: She sent it to me and I read it in two days, and I was just in awe of her writing. I thought her gritty, emo-

tional truth and the way that she spoke so openly about her past was such a healing thing. I got to the end and I was like, “I don’t know who this woman is, but I just want to hug her.” I feel like I went on that journey with her. And I called her the next day and said I would love to turn it into a

movie. And she asked me a lot of questions, and we talked about it. And then she called me a couple days later and said, “I’m going to give you the option.”

What did she ask you? What’d she want to know?

Witherspoon: She had a lot of things that she didn’t want it to be.

Like what?

Witherspoon: Well, it’s interesting because I said, “Why did you send it to me?” and she said, “Because I know you’re

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THEENVELOPE.COM from somewhere. I know you’re from Tennessee.” And it was really important that it wasn’t about, like, white-girl problems, you know? I told her that so many people in this world have nothing, and that’s what I really responded to, that you get to the end of this movie and this woman has nothing. She has no man and no money and no parents and no job, and it’s a happy ending. And that’s extraordinary in this life because so many people don’t know where to turn or what resources are going to lift them up out of their grief or their despair, and she did this for herself with nothing. And I felt like it could be inspirational to other people.

Laura, there’s a scene where Cheryl says something like it must be hard for you that I’m so much more sophisticated than you. It’s one of those conversations, I think, anybody who’s been a parent or a kid probably feels some empathy toward.

How much of your own experience as a mother and as a daughter did you bring into the role?

Dern: Oh, you know, everything and so much more. I mean, everything I’ve experienced and certainly my own love and good fortune in my relationship with my mother and all that I’m trying to figure out as a mother. And, you know, something Cheryl said that impacted me so much. In one of these Q&As recently, she talked about that scene specifically and the gift of writing the book at this point in her life because she said, “I lost my mother before I was the age where you look back and apologize for the kid you were, that didn’t know how lucky you were. So, in a way, my book was my opportunity to heal that and say that.”

Reese, the opening scene where you throw the boot is such a beautiful shot and such a dramatic sequence. Can you tell me where you guys were and how you shot that?

Witherspoon: It was actually the hardest sequence to shoot in the film. We were on top of Mt. Hood in Oregon, and we had to — we’re already staying at an elevated hotel, and then we had to take two ski lifts and then hike for about 30 minutes with all the equipment, including the portable toilet that absolutely nobody used. It was ridiculous. But then we had to rope ourselves in and walk single file on this tiny precipice. It was really scary.

Laura, you had a kind of unusual experi-

Anne Marie Fox Fox Searchlight

LAURA DERN played Cheryl Strayed’s mother in flashbacks in “Wild” with Reese Witherspoon, right. In earlier moments in the film, Strayed was portrayed by her own daughter, Bobbi, in scenes that Dern called “incredible.”

ence in that the little girl who played young Cheryl is actually Cheryl Strayed’s daughter whose name is Bobbi.

What was that like?

Dern: It was incredible. First of all, she’s an amazing person. We were all particularly moved because when Cheryl first saw Bobbi and I work together, and the first shot was Jean-Marc [Vallée] wanting her to run into my arms in the hallway of the school, Cheryl was standing at the monitor and I think she was stunned by a realization. Later she said, “You know, when my mother died, one of my thoughts was she’ll never know her grandchildren if I have children one day.

And here I am with this experience watching my daughter meet the grandmother I thought she’d never know, through this storytelling.” So it was incredible that

every time we were doing a flashback with her, we all couldn’t help but consider that for Cheryl.

has it. And she still has all of her camping gear and all of her cooking equipment and all of the outfits she wore.

When we walked in, Reese, we passed the giant backpack, a sort of display of it, and you said almost affectionately, “Oh, Monster.” Do you actually feel affection for that pack?

Witherspoon: I know it sounds bizarre, but I do. I miss Monster, I do. The first couple weeks were horrible and I hated Monster, and I’d kick it every time, and I would take it off my back every single time after he’d say cut. And then after five weeks I just got so used to it. It was like an appendage. And you know what’s funny is Cheryl still has Monster in her basement.

The reason Monster is an exact replica of her actual backpack is because she still

Is there a point at which you will attempt to re-create any part of this trek on your own?

Witherspoon: It’s so funny. I got home from the movie and it was about to be my birthday, and I said to my husband, I was like, “Jim, you know what we should do is get the kids and then we’re just going to go out there to the trails and we’re just going to do this, you know, just for seven days, us and the kids.” And he’s like, “That sounds like the worst idea I’ve ever heard. Next time right before your birthday can you do a movie in the South of France.”

rebecca.keegan@latimes.com

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SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2015

THEENVELOPE.COM

WHO KNEW? Steve Carell’s ‘Foxcatcher’ acting upends his persona

By Glenn Whipp

I

f you watched any of the 148 episodes of the longrunning TV comedy “The Office” featuring Steve Carell, you probably feel like you know the guy.

Funny. Decent. Full of good intentions. Handsome in a way that “Anchorman” director Adam McKay once described as: “He knows he’d be the bestlooking guy in his town in Indiana.”

Carell is, indeed, all these things, though, we can’t entirely vouch for the Indiana part, not having fully canvassed the place. He’s polite, friendly, unassuming, a “good person,” as his former “Daily Show” boss Jon Stewart puts it, with feeling. Carell loves his wife of 19 years, Nancy, and his two children and can almost bring you to tears with tales of bedtime stories with his youngest and what it will be like the night he opens a book and his son says, “Nah, I’m good.” (“Then again,” Carell notes, “every year I say, ‘They’re the perfect age right now.’ But then they get a year older and I say, ‘No, no. This is the one.’ ”)

STEVE CARELL breaks the

bonds of his Indiana handsome image with his portrayal of John du Pont in “Foxcatcher.” So now will he dive into serial killer roles?

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THEENVELOPE.COM Carell makes no bones about his love for Taylor Swift and laments that when a video went viral of him singing her latest hit, “Shake It Off,” it failed to also include the part where he explained why he thinks Swift is a “good egg.” (“I saw a video of her with a young cancer patient, and it wasn’t a concocted publicity stunt,” Carell says.

“She was just playing her guitar for this kid. It was so pure and beautiful, and she was so kind and generous and has such a big heart, and I thought, ‘I’ll love her forever.’ ”) We mention these things because they have a cumulative power. We feel we have him down pat and we take comfort that he’s out there, making us laugh.

That’s why it’s plainly shocking the first time we see him in the true-crime drama “Foxcatcher.” Playing eccentric billionaire John du Pont, Carell wears a prosthetic nose and layers of pasty makeup, speaks in a halting cadence and greets the world with a cold, dead-eyed demeanor. He is a man used to getting what he wants, and what he wants is to start an Olympic wrestling training facility on his estate and serve as the coach to these world-class athletes, even though he doesn’t know the first thing about wrestling.

It’s an absurd story and later turns tragic when the friendless Du Pont becomes unhinged and fixated on two wrestlers, brothers Mark (Channing Tatum) and Dave Schultz (Mark Ruffalo), inviting them to stay with him and ultimately killing Dave.

Director Bennett Miller had Tatum in mind for the vulnerable young wrestler from the beginning and met with Carell after the 52-year-old actor’s agent floated his name. Believing there’s often a divide between comic actors’ public personas and their more guarded, private sides, Miller invited Carell to lunch and, 31⁄2 hours later, came away convinced he had found the right man to play Du Pont.

“Nobody expected Du Pont to kill anybody, so it made sense to put somebody in that role who we would not expect was capable of such a thing,” Miller says. “There’s something about Steve that is benign. He told me he’d only played characters with mushy centers. And though Du Pont appeared to have a mushy center, he did not.

He looked like a bungling fellow, but inside he was dangerous.”

For his part, Carell was simply flattered Miller wanted to talk. Throughout a long conversation near his Toluca Lake home, Carell repeatedly says he likes to navigate

Photographs by

Scott garfield Sony Pictures Classics

“FOXCATCHER” director Bennett Miller, top left, confers with Steve Carell during the filming. Carell, above right as Du Pont, shares a scene with Channing Tatum, who portrays Olympic wrestler Mark Schultz. Carell is nominated for a lead actor Oscar.

his career with low expectations. He doesn’t like to feel like he’s auditioning for something or trying to convince a filmmaker that he’s right for the part. It doesn’t feel genuine. And authenticity is important to him.

“To be offered this movie was such a surprise,” Carell says. “I feel very much indebted to Bennett for trusting me. People ask, ‘How did you feel you were capable of doing this?’ In great part, it was because Bennett felt I was and I trusted him. Because I didn’t read the script and say, ‘This has me written all over it. I have to get a meeting with him.’ It’s just not how I work.”

One thing about harboring low expectations, though, is that when everything clicks, you’re in for a fun ride. “Foxcatcher” premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May, winning a standing ovation that seemed as if it would never end. Carell says that he never wants to go back to Cannes — because “it can never be that good again.”

“My wife and I walked this ethereal red carpet with music from the movie playing in the background, and everything seemed to be moving in slow motion,” Carell remembers. “Then that response when it was over. My wife and I were looking at each other, like, ‘Is this really happening?

Look where we are.’ ” Carell says he has no idea how the acclaim for his dramatic turn might change his career. The first offer he received after Cannes was to play a serial killer. He passed. He is making a thriller that “defies description” with Gore Verbinski in March. Just how description-defying is it?

Carell: “It’s a … it’s … it’s a … I don’t know how you would classify it. It’s a different character for me to play. No, not a serial killer.”

He also recently went against his laidback career approach, pursuing a meeting with a “big gun” director who owns the option on a “moving, important” story he’d like to tell.

“That’s the one and only time I’ve ever thrown my hat in,” Carell says, almost in disbelief. And how did it go? “I could hardly talk, I was so nervous. It was one of those conversations I walked away thinking, ‘That did not go well because I was an idiot and couldn’t put two words together.’ ” He laughs and then mock-bellows: “You see what happens when you put your heart out there?”

glenn.whipp@latimes.com

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SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2015

THEENVELOPE.COM ON LOCATION

BAD TO WORSE, DIGITALLY

BY PATRICK KEVIN DAY >>> In “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes,” the hyper-intelligent apes launched a brutal assault on the remnants of

humanity in the streets of downtown San Francisco. In reality, the action was in a desolate part of downtown New Orleans, where filmmakers re-created the City by the Bay with computers. Visual effects supervisor Dan Lemmon explains the process of making things go from bad to worse for the humans holing up on California Street.

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“We took over the intersection of Rampart Street and Common Street in New Orleans for four or five months,” Lemmon said. “Most of the buildings in that area were abandoned. We re-dressed that small area to play different parts of San Francisco.” Just a handful of shots were actually created in San Francisco, but so much digital manipulation was done to age the buildings that there was very little left of the original photography.

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Performance-captured apes were digitally added to the shot, but other elements that actually existed, such as the tank, also had to be re-created digitally in a technique called match moving. “We create a digital version of the camera that lines up to the physical camera,” Lemmon said. “So when we add the apes, everything sticks. If you don’t do it correctly, everything will slide around and they won’t look like they live in the same world.”

The apes are the work of dozens of actors and even some of the animators themselves, putting on motion-capture suits to act out the apes’ movements.

Images by Weta / 20th Century Fox

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The small physical set was extended with a digital version of California Street in San Francisco using a process called lidar scanning. “It works like a radar, but it’s laser based,” Lemmon said. “It sweeps a laser beam in a circle and you get a cloud of threedimensional points, and you use that to build a geometry of the location.” A visual effects artist traveled up and down California Street for three days to map every conture of the architecture.

patrick.day@latimes.com

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For the final layer, digital smoke and fire was added on top of the actual fire on set to disguise the natural gas flame bars. Despite the detail given to the background, it was dimmed to the point of near invisibility because the story called for a city without electricity. “The temptation is to add enough light to see all the detail, but, in service to the story, we ended up taking it back,” Lemmon said. Additional muzzle flashes were also added to accentuate the real flashes from the guns shooting blanks.

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THEENVELOPE.COM THE CONTENDERS

CAN TAKE A COMPLIMENT Tommy Lee Jones in “The Fugitive” of the piece. He is the law, but he is the law with a conscience and a sense of what’s right and what’s wrong.

By James Rocchi

I

n “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” Wes Anderson’s candy-bright fable of decades in the life of the title European edifice, he’s Inspector Henckels, a late-1930s police officer and a gentleman, a bright flash of civility before a dark era. The film received nine Academy Award nominations.

In “Birdman,” Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s loopy, dark comedy about show business and strange miracles, he’s actor Mike Shiner, a last-minute hire for the vanity Broadway project backed by Michael Keaton’s fading ex-superstar. It too received nine Academy Award nominations, including his supporting actor nomination.

Discussing both films, Edward Norton speaks with the intelligent consideration that’s a hallmark of his career, occasionally cut by a quick, funny aside. To him, the honor is in being nominated — but sincerely, and for well-thought-out reasons: “The academy is, at least, a body of the people who actually make films, so to the degree that any of this stuff matters at all, it’s the nicest of compliments.”

Your character in “Birdman” spits out observations like “Popularity is the slutty little cousin of prestige.” How do you keep that from going from zesty to bitter?

[Laughs.] Well, you know, not that bitter is inherently off the table as an option for that character.... There’s the old line, how many actors does it take to screw in a light bulb? A hundred. One to do it, 99 to say, “I could have done it so much better.” I think there is some of that in Shiner, as there probably is in every actor. What balances it is whatever his vanity, whatever his covetousness, the very fame that he eschews … he would love a little more of. I think his feet are also authentically anchored in a real belief in what he does.

“Birdman” is a film of big concepts, including the nature and character of acting, but then you showed up one day and you’re shooting a slap-fight in a Speedo.

Alejandro said it really well, comparing this film to his other films (“Babel,” “21 Grams”): “I’m not any less interested in what’s difficult about life. I’m just maybe a little more able to laugh at it.”

In that sense — this will sound dangerously highfalutin — but when I read it, it reminded me of films like “8½” and what I love about Fellini’s films, which is the glorious ambition to get inside the human head. Not just the artist’s head, but inside insecurity, self-doubt, vanity, lust, covetousness, noble ambition, and just deal with it all in a way that’s both critical and compassionate at the same time.

With “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” you have the meticulous design of Wes Anderson, and “Birdman” seems like a more freewheeling affair.

I think, despite the kind of tonal differences and the experiences that the films delivered to the viewer — in terms of one being more meticulous and one seeming to flow in this kind of exuberant tumble — the truth is, both were the product of an enormous amount of preparation and very careful planning.

Wes Anderson has cast you twice as an authority figure.

I think my characters with Wes, so far, have been authority figures in uniform only and have, in fact, been humanists wearing a uniform. Henckels is an inspector who remembers what noblesse oblige actually meant. I felt like, in “Grand Budapest,” I was sort of the

Kirk McKoy Los Angeles Times

EDWARD NORTON on “Birdman” and “Grand Budapest Hotel”: “Both were the

product of an enormous amount of preparation and very careful planning.”

Someone once said, “The best thing about an Academy Award nomination is you know what’s going to come before your name in your obituary.”

[Laughs.] God, I hope there’s quite a few things in front of that, even.

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SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2015

THEENVELOPE.COM

J.K. SIMMONS,

left, took a chance with rookie director Damien Chazelle.

Daniel McFadden Sony Pictures Classics

BEHIND THE SCENE

STAYING RIGHT IN RHYTHM

By Michael Ordoña

‘W

hiplash” accomplishes so much against such long odds — it’s a $3-million indie shot in just 19 days that somehow makes jazz drumming utterly gripping — that it’s tempting to write the October release off as pure magic. But a closer look at the movie’s knockout finale is proof of the meticulous calculation and technique that crafted the sleeper hit that earned an Oscar nomination.

To be clear, the below dissects the ending of the film that pits promising young drummer Andrew Neyman (Miles Teller) against ferocious conservatory ensemble conductor Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), so, naturally, spoilers ahead.

By film’s end, Andrew and Fletcher have had a falling out. Fletcher pretends it’s all water under the bridge and invites Andrew to sit in on a key performance that will have many important critics in the audience. But he’s setting up his former student for a humiliating failure. After a rocky start, Andrew is on to him and turns the tables.

ON STAGE Fletcher looks at Andrew. Seems pleased: This will be fun ...

But Andrew doesn’t look scared anymore.

Writer-director Damien Chazelle: Especially in indie cinema, you don’t have set pieces — the shootout at the end of “The Wild Bunch” or the bank heist in “Rififi” or the car chase in “The French Connection” — they seem to be lacking, outside of giant superhero movies. We wanted this to be a great set piece.

Simmons: It was taking a leap of faith with a first-time director — Can this kid deliver? Can he deliver in the editing room

because that’s where the movie is made? I think the final sequence is as good an example as you can find of an extended sequence being created in the editing room.

Editor Tom Cross: Damien meticulously storyboarded this finale. He had a full animatic [a kind of video storyboard] put to music for it.

Chazelle: [laughs] It’s definitely the kind of thing you’d expect more on a Spielberg set or something. When I say “animatic,” what I really mean is I had these storyboards I drew with pencil and paper — I had 150 pages. I used my phone to scan them into my computer and

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SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2015

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THEENVELOPE.COM chopped them into panels, dropped them into Final Cut Pro, put the song down on the timeline, and edited to the music.

We knew this was potentially a disaster in the making, so it was just about being as utterly and neurotically prepared as we could be.

But then, before Fletcher can even turn back around — let alone cue the band — Andrew launches into a double-time Latin.

Composer Justin Hurwitz: Miles’ performance is amazing, how fast he learned to play that solo. He only had a few weeks.

Teller, who had some rock drumming experience: I’d absolutely never played any kind of jazz drumming. I’d never held a stick traditionally before.

Hurwitz: Damien sent him an MP3 of the solo. Miles is usually pretty gregarious via email; he writes these long, friendly emails. And he writes a two-word email back to Damien: “Holy ....”

Andrew’s in control, pouring himself into his drums — and it’s a sight to behold. Like a master dancer, movements so fast yet precise, brash yet elegant …

Director of photography Sharon Meir: In our very first meeting, Damien talked about how it has to be precise, but free-spirited all at the same time. The shots are not random. Those were not “spray and pray,” a bazillion angles and stitch it together. They’re all very carefully designed.

Chazelle: There were all these tricks, cool little camera moves we only wanted to use for the finale. So as much as the audio, it’s the shot selection that clues you in that something special is going on.

Meir: The swish pans going back and forth between Fletcher and Andrew — those were hard to execute. The camera operator, Eric Fletcher — Damien was standing over his shoulder and tapping him to pan.

Cross: He wanted the viewer to feel the cuts. He would talk in terms of having “cuts at right angles to one another.” We have a wide [shot] of the stage from the left side, and a complementary angle from the right side. You wouldn’t think to cut those together, but he knew it would be jarring in just the right way.

The brass starts giving way to drum breaks. And Andrew makes each break a stunner …

Photographs by

Daniel McFadden Sony Pictures Classics

TENSIONS BETWEEN drum student Andrew (Miles Teller, above) and

the demanding Fletcher (J.K. Simmons) come to a head in the final scene.

Scene from the movie Whiplash. J.K.

Chazelle: There’s something about the expressions on the trombonists’ faces — the intensity with which they’re blowing into their horns.

That whole idea of jazz as not this laid-back, relaxed thing; jazz is this muscular, energetic, aggressive music.

Cross: Probably the biggest reference for that scene was “Raging Bull.” He wanted it to feel like an action scene first and a music scene second; as visceral and savage as those boxing scenes.

Chazelle: Tom and I watched [an early cut] — “Well, this is a great music video.

But it isn’t really doing the trick.”

So we went back and did a new pass, entirely focused on facial expressions.

That’s when the scene started to come alive.

Cross: Damien referred to the car chase in “The French Connection.” It had these great stunts and car photography, but it really hung on Gene Hackman’s brilliant performance.

Simmons: So often, they go, “Now we’re moving in for the close-up, so everybody get nervous and weird.” Shine a key light in everybody’s face and have a camera 6 inches from you and “Ready, go, be brilliant.” We never had that feeling with Damien and Sharon and Elan [Yaari], the gaffer.

Chazelle: Sharon’s idea was the lighting would change over the course of the performance. Sometimes it’s in obvious ways, sometimes more subtle.

Some stuff we did in color correction, like we zero in on Andrew’s face and let the light go hotter and hotter so it looks like he’s being burned alive by the sound.

Fletcher looks at Andrew. Andrew looks at Fletcher. And then — Fletcher turns to the band, raises his hand …

Cross: The final look between Fletcher and Andrew, before he cues the last note — Damien talked about the fleeting last smile at the end of “Bonnie and Clyde” and the shootout between the three men in “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” and the extreme close-ups of the eyes.

Teller: He had it framed on J.K.’s eyes, and when he smiles, you just see his cheeks creep up in the frame. I really dug that.

Meir: Right, someone with cheeks like J.K. Simmons can do that.

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SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2015

THEENVELOPE.COM FOREIGN FILMS

HOW ‘IDA’ VIEWS THE PAST

By Michael Ordoña

P

awel Pawlikowski left his native Poland as a teen, at the start of the 1970s. He eventually settled in Britain, where he went on to direct award-winning documentaries and features such as “My Summer of Love.” So one will excuse him if his vision of Poland is idiosyncratic.

“I remember it in black and white, or I imagine it in black and white,” he says of choosing to shoot his foreign-language Oscar nominee, “Ida,” without color and in the antiquated 4:3 aspect ratio (the shape of a 1950s TV screen). “I didn’t want to do a superficially realistic film; I wanted it to be a meditation.”

“Ida’s” director and co-writer often invokes simplicity in describing how the film was made, including the use of a static camera and the lack of a musical score, but the movie itself is complex. Ida is an orphan and novitiate nun in the early 1960s who discovers just before she is to take her vows that her parentage is Jewish. She is accompanied on her quest to learn her family’s fate by her only known relative, the hard-living, Stalinist official Wanda, who has deep issues of her own to confront.

Pawlikowski says he had wrestled with the character of Ida for years, always unsatisfied with the story she evoked — “too plotty,” he says — until he matched her with Wanda, based on a real person he met in Britain.

He calls the actual woman “very nice and bright and kind and witty, an old lady; she had been in her youth a radical Marxist and a Stalinist state prosecutor. She was in charge of political show trials and actually caused the death of innocent people. Then when I put this character of Wanda together with the character of Ida, suddenly there was this very dense psychological story. Two very different characters, two believers of sorts. And suddenly I had the engine.

“But also it’s about Poland, my childhood, my thoughts on religion. One of the impulses was to bring [that time] to life … because I no longer know what was imagined and what was real.”

Music Box Films

NOMINATED FILM “Ida,” from Poland, is shot in black and white with a frame proportioned like an old TV screen.

Foreign-language films A look at the other nominees. S21 He recruited longtime collaborator Ryszard Lenczewski to shoot it. Lenczewski did much to help craft the film’s look but had essential disagreements with Pawlikowski. The auteur, for instance, wanted to experiment with framing that responded to the 4:3 aspect ratio by using an unusual amount of head space — negative space above the subject.

The cinematographer fell ill very soon after shooting began and bowed out. The director eventually turned to the 28-yearold camera operator, Lukasz Zal, to take on his first assignment as director of photography on a feature. The cinematographers now share an Oscar nomination.

“When Lukasz came, he was very brave because he had no reputation to protect,” says Pawlikowski with a laugh. “We kept going further [with the vertical framing] to the point where it was so extreme we didn’t know if people would accept it. Lukasz was still young and had this devilmay-care energy.”

By email, Zal says, “Working with Pawel was a very positive, inspiring and creative process. … Pawel is incredibly conscious of the pictures.”

Indeed, Pawlikowski’s stated intent was to make a “photographic” film, one in which the camera almost never moves.

“We saw that [the odd framing] created the feeling of loss, isolation and that it wasn’t just a strange mannerism but it conveyed so much more,” says Zal. “I very much like the scene when [Ida] talks to the Christ,” he adds. “Moonlit

night, the figure of Christ in the fountain, field in the background. I dreamed that shot, and I shot it exactly like I imagined it. … I was able to use natural sources of light, like candles.”

The effect of the vertical framing varies, as the convent’s large, enclosed spaces can seem oppressive with so small a figure in frame, and the countryside can feel wide open as Ida and Wanda trek through it.

Or it can be interpreted in just the reverse.

“Some audiences have said the sky was crushing them,” Pawlikowski says. “When you do something that’s formally strong, it elicits all kinds of responses. When you make these decisions, they’re kind of intuitive. You don’t intellectualize what it means; it feels right.”

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THEENVELOPE.COM FOREIGN FILMS

POWERFUL EXCHANGES

By James Rocchi >>> Pawel Pawlikowski’s “Ida” has seen its cast, crew and cinematography awarded and hailed by such groups as the Los Angeles Film Critics Circle and

the American Society of Cinematographers well in advance of its Oscar nomination. The story of a young Polish nun who learns how her family’s real roots in Judaism were destroyed by the Holocaust seems to be the current front-runner to win the foreign-language Oscar.

“Seems” is the operative word here, of course; this year’s other foreign film nominees include portraits of life during wartime, raucous revenge, Job-like suffering and a cow herder caught up in a holy war. Regardless of the winner on Oscar night, a look at the nominees in full demonstrates that any of them could take, and be worthy of, the Academy Award.

‘Leviathan’ Set in the bleak and cold north of Russia, the film offers a scathing look at the collusion and corruption between church, state and business in Vladimir Putin’s new age — and yet, as director Andrey Zvyagintsev has noted, its inspiration came from an American news story. Winner of the screenplay award at Cannes, “Leviathan” plays like a mix of Job and Kafka, as auto mechanic Kolia (Alexsey Serebryakov) fights an attempt by the town’s mayor to seize his land and property in the name of progress and get-rich-quick scheming. The film has been controversial in Russia. Zvyagintsev fills the screen with epic visions of the landscape — wood and wave, barren shores and stark plains — but it’s the smaller, quieter moments between the characters that make the film more than just spectacle and scenery.

Cohen Media Group

‘Timbuktu’

Anna Matveeva Sony Pictures Classics

The Mauritanian entry directed by Abderrahmane Sissako (“Bamako”) is set during the Islamist revolt in Mali in 2012, with Libyan jihadists trying to force their will on the local inhabitants — including the Muslims who want no part of the “revolutionary” madness. There’s the clash of cultures, but there are also the struggles of cow herder Kidane (Ibrahim Ahmed) and his conflict with a fisherman.

Made with both hope and despair in its every frame, it’s a gorgeous, haunting vision whose horrors are not undercut by its humor but rather even more accentuated by how the most inhuman acts come from flawed, real humans. A story of language barriers, religious conflict, human relations and how fanaticism can lead to folly, “Timbuktu” contains stunning shots of Mali’s land and light with unblinking looks at the people who live there.

‘Wild Tales’

Allfilm

‘Tangerines’ Estonia’s first Academy Award contender has another plot about what happens to the land when borders are undone by war, as a tangerine farmer (Lembit Ulfsak) caught up in an early-1990s regional conflict in Georgia provides shelter and help to two wounded soldiers — one from each side. More about conversation around the dinner table than action on the battlefield, “Tangerines” still thrums with tension and tragedy, and Estonian acting legend Ulfsak gives a performance — quiet, grave and direct — that’s one of the highlights of the film. Director Zaza Urushadze also has a clearly sincere understanding of the film’s glades and orchards, whether as the site of blooming fruit trees or a place for unmarked graves.

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By Argentine director Damián Szifron, the film tells six stories of revenge and revelation, whether a wedding-day meltdown or a spur-of-the-moment murder; every story is packed with energy, intelligence and go-forbroke effort. Although some of them seem to relate specifically to Argentina — a seemingly mild-mannered man taking on the parking authorities becomes an explosive metaphor for dealing with institutionalized cynicism and inertia — they’ll also resonate for anyone who’s been frustrated by the petty pitfalls of modern life. Érica Rivas, cast as a bride whose sadness turns to madness in the film’s final vignette, is a standout, but the whole cast brings Szifron’s hilarious and troublemaking drama to life, while his direction shoots for the top from the first bleakly funny scene and keeps trying for more.

Sony Pictures Classics

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THEENVELOPE.COM THE CONTENDERS

WHAT’S ON HIS MIND? PLENTY

By Michael Ordoña

S

ome writers say they don’t set out to make a statement but to ask a question. For Alejandro G. Iñárritu, director and co-writer of “Birdman,” there were plenty of questions — about ego and id, self-worth, purpose and identity — just not the kind usually found in a fast-paced backstage comedy.

“What is the meaning of all this? Why am I doing what I’m doing? I’m always looking for something that will in some way electrify me with joy,” Iñárritu says. “It’s a relentless question. That’s what drives me and where I relate to this guy.”

In “Birdman,” “this guy” is protagonist Riggan Thomson, played by Michael Keaton. Riggan is a washed-up action star on a Quixotic quest to adapt, direct and star in a Broadway play to reestablish himself as an artist. Iñárritu says Riggan’s existential frustrations came very much from his own, something reflected in how the other characters can seem like parts of the protagonist’s own psyche, alternately helping and hindering.

“All those characters are very, very close to me internally or physically. I relate to all of them. I have a daughter and a son, and I have, in the last 15 years, related to people who look like those guys, and I have become those guys,” says the filmmaker.

“Michael is lying when he says he is not Riggan because nobody could not relate to that guy. Everybody’s insecure and everybody questions our own success. Everybody questions our priorities. Nobody escapes. And on the set, all of us felt a joyful embarrassment of portraying things we have been involved in. There’s a delicious joy to being empathic to these lovably pathetic creatures we are.”

In keeping with the introspection invit-

WE CAN ALL relate to “Birdman’s” Riggan, asserts Alejandro G. Iñárritu.

Robert Gauthier Los Angeles Times

ed by these questions, the twice-Oscarnominated maker of multilayered dramas such as “Babel” and “Amores Perros” decided to present the entire comedy as a single, unbroken take (hidden edits notwithstanding).

“That emotional state that is so complex in his mind, this mechanism of getting everything to flow without cuts, that’s what I was trying to do. Not to impress anybody technically. If people are distracted by that, we’ve failed. I’m not a technician; I’m an artist,” he says, shaking his wild, mad-scientist hair.

“The difficult thing here is that I didn’t have any precedent, ‘Here are the rules of the game.’ There are no rules. I didn’t find any comedies that had been done in one shot. Even [director] Mike Nichols — rest in peace — told me one week before I started shooting, ‘Alejandro, this is madness.

You should stop. You are running toward disaster. You will never get it.’ He’s the

master of comedy, and he really scared me.”

Iñárritu laughs but is quick to add: “He was right, by the way. I was attempting something in which, one, I didn’t have any experience, and, second, there was no reference. It could fail very easily for many, many reasons.”

Sadly, he says, Nichols didn’t get to see “Birdman” before he died. But a friend “sent me a note that said, ‘Maybe he saw it and he died.’ ” It’s easy for Iñárritu to laugh now, when his gamble has paid off so richly. The film received nine Oscar nominations, including picture, director, original screenplay and multiple acting nods. But perhaps it would have come up snake eyes if its director/co-writer hadn’t maintained a sense of humor about himself.

“The film is about mediocrity, how we deal with our limitations,” he says. “What our parents told us we are capable of doing

and who we are — we are great, we are unique, all that … — but we are not. It’s brutal, but it’s true. Honestly, that’s why there’s a lot of psychology and a lot of antidepressants, because we are not.

“And the difference between what we really need, which is affection and love, and what we are normally seeking, which is admiration. In the end, no matter how successful you are, nothing will fulfill you.

It’s impossible. An Oscar will fulfill you? To have that statue, you will be happy? Life will be easy?”

Iñárritu says the questioning continued all the way through the process.

“I was doing a film about a play, and I was kind of becoming that character, asking myself why I am doing this, that is so difficult to make and is very possible to fail.

So every time I’m riding home, I’m thinking, ‘What the … am I doing?’ ”

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THEENVELOPE.COM THE CONTENDERS: SCORE

HARMONY ACHIEVED ON EARTH, REACHING TO THE HEAVENS

BY MICHAEL ORDOÑA >>> At its best, film can take viewers to new worlds or reveal truths about ones they thought they knew. This year, composers from all over this world have undertaken those journeys with Oscar-nominated scores, from a trip to far-flung reaches of space to a fictional country that borrows sounds from around the globe. Here’s a look at some of the nominees.

Fred Duval FilmMagic/Getty Images

Jim Spellman WireImage

Focus Features

ALEXANDRE DESPLAT

HANS ZIMMER

JÓHANN JÓHANNSSON

Alexandre Desplat “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” “The Imitation Game”

have developed a signature sound.

“On ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox,’ he allowed me to do things I’d explored in previous films of mine in Europe,” says Desplat. “It’s as if he summarized all these quirky ideas I had before, using mandolins, cimbaloms, and put them in one box and shook the box: ssshhhhkk, ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox.’ Then shook it up again, ‘Moonrise Kingdom,’ and then again for ‘Budapest.’ But, yes, there is a box which belongs only to Wes.” Anderson and Desplat delighted in mixing sounds from Switzerland, Russia and other countries for the film’s fictional Central European nation and in shaking out individual parts of compositions.

For “The Imitation Game,” in which mathematician Alan Turing and his team build a computer prototype to break a Nazi

code, the Frenchman’s aims were simultaneously more machinelike and no less human: “To try to convey the speed these geniuses have — their brains go at the speed of light.”

“I thought there’s a quality to the keyboards I could use to represent the computer. All the fast arpeggios are played by a computerized piano bank from Abbey Road. Some of them are programmed exactly as I played them. Some others, I just played the chord and the computer randomly plays up and down the scales.

“But that’s just one element. That’s just the neurons,” he says. “Then there’s the orchestra, which is trying to give body and warmth, and create suspense and a bit of the tragedy. The music helps bring out the unspoken suffering.”

H

e now has eight Academy Award nominations and more than 150 composing credits in film and TV. Perhaps that’s because Alexandre Desplat is always keen for a new challenge — like scoring five tonally different films in one year.

In 2014, Desplat scored the monster movie “Godzilla,” several wartime stories with “The Monuments Men,” “Unbroken” and “The Imitation Game,” and the fast-paced comedy “The Grand Budapest Hotel.”

That last project is director Wes Anderson’s third film with Desplat, who says they

Hans Zimmer ‘Interstellar’

T

here’s a reason Oscar winner and now 10-time nominee Hans Zimmer’s “Interstellar” score is so present in Christopher Nolan’s movie: It’s part of the film’s DNA. “The music and the movie are being made simultaneously. It’s not an afterthought; it’s an integral part of his process,” says the German-born Zimmer. Having worked closely with Nolan for a decade, the two collaborate in the earliest stages.

“Long before he started shooting,” Zimmer says, “we had a main theme, we had figured out what we wanted our language to be. For instance, four pianos, the idea of the big church organ was very important to us, and far more emphasis on the woodwinds.”

The music can swell to expressions of tremendous power, sure — that pipe organ’s crescendos! — but it also sprinkles moments of loving fragility amid its cosmic beauty.

“Chris very casually mentions ideas: ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to figure out a way of consolidating the ideas of relativity, time and quantum mechanics?’ So I go off — I don’t actually have to do it; I just have to make you feel as if it’s happening,” he says, laughing.

Jóhann Jóhannsson ‘The Theory of Everything’

T

he Icelandic composer didn’t get to meet Stephen Hawking when scoring the film about the youthful romance between the renowned physicist and Jane Wilde.

By email, Jóhannsson says he reread Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time” “to get a sense of his voice as a writer before I started writing the music. I think his sense of humor and the poetic, almost lyrical way he writes about physics was very inspiring.

“His relationship with Jane is really the heart of the film. This was represented by the piano, which is a very expressive and precise instrument. It has this mathematical and mechanical kind of quality to it, which unites the emotions and human aspects with the cerebral, scientific parts.”

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ROSAMUND PIKE says “Gone

Girl” director David Fincher could “see beyond the facade.”

Carolyn Cole Los Angeles Times

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AN IDENTITY OBSCURED

BY FANTASY

BY REBECCA KEEGAN >>>R EPORTING FROM N EW Y ORK

W

hen director David Fincher cast Rosamund Pike in “Gone Girl,” he asked that she model her performance as the movie’s mysterious missing wife, Amy Elliott-Dunne, not on another actress or well-known icon but on Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, the willowy blond bride of John F. Kennedy Jr. who died alongside her husband in a plane crash in 1999. ¶ Pike paged through back copies of Vanity Fair and looked for video of the young woman who was to be her muse but ultimately found Bessette-Kennedy hard to know. ¶ “It was interesting for [Fincher] to give me that reference because it’s just image, there’s nothing written about her by anyone who really knew her. There’s nothing in her own voice,” Pike said.

“So I began imagining what it felt like to be posing as that fantasy.”

The fantasy characters that women portray in their daily lives — and how exhausting they are to maintain — is a central idea in “Gone Girl,” a stylish thriller about marital secrets adapted by Gillian Flynn from her bestselling novel of the same name. The movie, both a critical and box-office hit since its premiere at the New York Film Festival in late September, stars Ben Affleck as Nick Dunne, Amy’s befuddled husband and the lead suspect in her disappearance.

For the first time in her career, Pike, 35, is at the white-hot center of a hit, and it’s for a complex performance that required her to layer the ideal of a “cool girl,” a modern archetype Flynn coined in her book, over a much darker core — a performance that earned Pike her first Oscar nomination.

In an interview hours before the New York premiere, seven months’ pregnant

with her second child, the British actress confessed she hadn’t slept the night before, suffering a mixture of jet lag, discomfort and excitement.

“I’ve never really been at the fulcrum of something quite as massive as this,” Pike said.

She has, however, notched some experience as a fantasy woman, including the role that would introduce her to international audiences: the icy Miranda Frost in the 2002 James Bond film “Die Another Day.” Pike, born in London as the only child of two opera singers, had been acting in British television and on the stage when she booked that career-making part. She followed it with well-regarded supporting performances in a diverse array of projects: a Jane Austen adaptation (“Pride & Prejudice”), a coming-of-age period drama (“An Education”), a Tom Cruise thriller (“Jack

somehow the facade would not tumble.

And yet when I was speaking to David, I thought, somehow this man is getting me and is seeing other things, and it’s quite exciting. This guy knows I’ve got this character in me, and I don’t know how he knows that, but he does. He’s got a hunch about it.”

Once Pike was cast, she had certain technical tasks to accomplish, including mastering a patrician, prep-school version of an American accent. Having grown up with musicians for parents, Pike has a particularly attuned ear, though she found the word “murder” especially challenging, with its two Rs. Due to the shooting schedule, she also had to gain and lose the same 12 pounds three times over the course of a 100-day production, which she did with the help of a Reacher”). professional boxer.

It was that breadth of work that ap“Amy has faked this life where she’s eatpealed to Fincher when he was looking for ing a full pizza and remaining a size 2,” Pike his enigmatic Amy. said. “In a way, gaining the weight is a sort “As someone who watches actors for a of angry expression of what she feels about living, you get a pretty good idea of the arthat image that she peddled for so long. She starts to negate it by eating cheeseburgers rows in their quiver,” Fincher said. “And I couldn’t get a bead on Rosamund. There and fries.”

Putting on a performance as someone was an opacity there that I found really interesting. I couldn’t say, ‘Oh, yeah, this is who is effortlessly charming and skinny what she does,’ because what she does in isn’t so far from what many actresses are ‘An Education’ is very, very different from asked to do. Asked if both the delight and what she does in ‘Jack Reacher.’ ... She was burden of assuming a persona didn’t have a totally at home in 1962; she was totally at particular resonance for her, Pike said it did. home in a James Bond movie, in ‘Pride & Prejudice.’ I liked that “When you’re playing a you could spin [Pike’s career] in character, you don’t have light and it would refract differto like her; you just have to ent beams.” get her,” she said. “WhatFincher and Pike held a ever that says about you. book club of two over Skype, You’re always called upon discussing Flynn’s complicated to delve into some aspects of your psyche. Some of character as Pike unwittingly began revealing more of herself. them will be the really fun When she visited Fincher in St. bits to explore, and some Louis, where he was location will be the more troubling —R OSAMUND P IKE parts to explore. When scouting, she shared a crucial quality she shared with Amy, that they are you’re playing this character who’s a good both only children. manipulator, it leaves you with an uneasy “I was aware from our Skype conversa- feeling, ’cause she wields a lot of power, the way she convinces people, which is a kind of tions that something very unusual was happening,” Pike said. “I felt that this man power one has as an actor too. It can make was reading me in a way that people often you feel unhinged at some point. fail to do, that he was starting to see beyond “But everybody basically has a facade,” the facade. To be honest, there is a Rosa- Pike said. “It’s a fun game to play. Facebook mund Pike facade that’s not of my own licenses it, Instagram licenses it ... I don’t making. There is a persona that I’m very actually do either. Just staying rooted in aware of being out there which I never built. your true self amid all the hoopla can be the “It’s British, it’s aloof, basically an image hardest to navigate.” created by the ‘Die Another Day’ movie. I’d rebecca.keegan@latimes.com spend two hours talking to a journalist, and

‘There is a Rosamund Pike facade that’s not of my own making.’

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THEENVELOPE.COM THE COSTUMES

THAT’S ‘GRAND’

BY JANET KINOSIAN >>> Italian costume designer Milena Canonero is not new to filmmaker Wes Andersen’s quirky universe. She’s lent her three-time Oscar-winning skill to “The Darjeeling Limited” and “The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou” and does the same in the director’s charming “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” which is set between the two world wars in a candy-colored fictional Eastern European nation called Zubrowka.

Anderson has “a very creative and precise vision,” Canonero says. Successful collaboration comes about “by submerging myself into a Wes world. He encourages and stimulates me to bring my own creative input. He is a very special filmmaker and auteur.”

Photographs of Fiennes and Swinton,

Martin Scali Fox Searchlight Pictures; of Dafoe, Fox Searchlight Pictures; renderings by Milena Canonero Fox Searchlight Pictures

THE HOTEL UNIFORM that Ralph Fiennes wears as M. Gustave is faithful, in style and cut, to the 1930s, but the color palette — specially dyed — is fanciful.

Given that Zubrowka is fictional, how much of those wonderful male uniforms of service was stylized?

The hotel uniforms’ style and cut are faithful to the 1930s period, but I was searching for a color palette that was not too predictable for hotel staff uniforms. In London, I found beautiful purple and mauve face cloths from Hainsworth, and Wes really liked them. The bulk of the material was subsequently dyed for us by the German company Mehler. We made

all the hotel uniform costumes in our workshop in Gorlitz, Germany.

I designed the gray-and-black [soldier] uniforms based on the amalgamation of different military sources. Wes did not want anything to be too specific or historically correct and wanted to avoid typical green military colors. Wes, who is extremely particular about logos, designed most of the insignias, while others were designed at our Roman workshop and submitted to Wes for his final touch.

The two major female characters straddle age, station and era: Madame D’s a rich, dying grande dame, and Agatha is the baker ingénue, and they’re dressed oceans apart. How did their look develop?

Wes described Madame D as a very wealthy art collector about 90 years old, eccentric and beautiful. He had a great prosthetic makeup team to age Tilda Swinton to look old but still very attractive. I suggested she’s retro but very ele-

gant and arty. As Wes envisioned, she collects Klimt, so I printed a Klimt-inspired pattern for her velvet costumes. I rendered the whole look on Photoshop, including the hairstyle and the hat to go with it.

Agatha is totally different. She’s a working girl with a birthmark in the shape of Mexico; a very Wes Anderson touch.

She’s young and sweet like her pastries and simply dressed in clothes she has slightly outgrown. She has little money

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THEENVELOPE.COM

and wears a sweater under her short sleeves to keep herself warm. Since she works in a pastry shop, I selected colors that went with her pastries. Wes liked that, and he added the blade of wheat that she always has in her hair.

Fendi made Swinton’s luscious fur cape and Prada made her numerous brown suitcases. How did those collaborations come about? Did they collaborate on any other costumes?

Wes and I have very good relations with Fendi and Prada. We contacted them at the beginning of prep to ask for their support and collaboration. Fendi not only provided me with the Black Diamond mink fur trim and muff for Madame D’s coat but also made the gray Astrakhan coat that is designed for Ed Norton and provided us with all the furs I needed in the movie.

Prada made the luscious black leather coat I designed for Willem Dafoe. We then inserted the special pocket for the arsenal of weapons that Wes very specifically requested. The silver knuckles of Willem’s were made especially by Wes’ friend Waris Ahluwalia, who is not only a renowned jewelry maker but also an actor and appears often in Wes’ movies; here he plays the Indian concierge.

How involved were the various actors in their costumes and fittings? Did anyone make suggestions that actually made it into the film?

A KLIMT-LIKE print was

envisioned for Tilda Swinton’s elderly art collector. The ruthless thug played by Willem Dafoe wears a leather Prada coat with a special pocket for the nasty tools of his trade.

The actors on a Wes Anderson movie like to wear their clothes. I show them drawings of their look, and they know by then everything has been worked out with Wes. Most of them have played in his other movies and understand some of the typical quirkiness of Wes. Then Wes will do the last touches, especially with the makeup and hair that he is so particular about.

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✔✔✔✔✔✔YOUR✔✔✔✔✔✔

OSCAR BALLOT (WITH SOME ADVICE)

BY GLENN WHIPP >>> And the Oscar goes to … ? Show off your Oscars savvy with this ballot (and some insider tips in every award category) for the 87th Academy Awards.

B E S T P I CT U RE

L E AD AC T O R

S U P P O RTI N G AC TR E S S

❏ “American Sniper” ❏ “Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)” ❏ “Boyhood” ❏ “The Grand Budapest Hotel” ❏ “The Imitation Game” ❏ “Selma” ❏ “The Theory of Everything” ❏ “Whiplash”

❏ Steve Carell, “Foxcatcher” ❏ Bradley Cooper, “American Sniper” ❏ Benedict Cumberbatch, “The Imitation Game” ❏ Michael Keaton, “Birdman” ❏ Eddie Redmayne, “The Theory of Everything”

❏ Patricia Arquette, “Boyhood” ❏ Laura Dern, “Wild” ❏ Keira Knightley, “The Imitation Game” ❏ Emma Stone, “Birdman” ❏ Meryl Streep, “Into the Woods”

✔ And the winner is: “Birdman.” Its

Producers Guild and Directors Guild awards give it a momentum that will be hard for another movie to overcome.

D I RE CT OR ❏ Wes Anderson, “The Grand Budapest Hotel” ❏ Alejandro G. Iñárritu, “Birdman” ❏ Richard Linklater, “Boyhood” ❏ Bennett Miller, “Foxcatcher” ❏ Morten Tyldum, “The Imitation Game”

✔ And the winner is: Iñárritu. Tight

race goes to the Directors Guild of America winner.

✔ And the winner is: Redmayne. Keaton could prevail, but tough to pick against the history of the Screen Actors Guild winner taking this Oscar.

L E AD AC T R ES S ❏ Marion Cotillard, “Two Days, One Night” ❏ Felicity Jones, “The Theory of Everything” ❏ Julianne Moore, “Still Alice” ❏ Rosamund Pike, “Gone Girl” ❏ Reese Witherspoon, “Wild”

✔ And the winner is: Moore wins her first Oscar on nomination No. 5.

S U PP O RTIN G AC TO R ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏

Robert Duvall, “The Judge” Ethan Hawke, “Boyhood” Edward Norton, “Birdman” Mark Ruffalo, “Foxcatcher” J.K. Simmons, “Whiplash”

✔ And the winner is: Simmons. Good job!

✔ And the winner is: Arquette for

investing a dozen years and so much of herself into “Boyhood.”

A DAPT ED S CR E ENP L AY ❏ “American Sniper,” Jason Hall ❏ “The Imitation Game,” Graham Moore ❏ “Inherent Vice,” Paul Thomas Anderson ❏ “The Theory of Everything,” Anthony McCarten ❏ “Whiplash,” Damien Chazelle

✔ And the winner is: This will likely be the one Oscar going to “The Imitation Game,” though the popular “Whiplash” could surprise.

OR I GI NA L S C R EE N PL AY ❏ “Birdman,” Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris Jr. & Armando Bo ❏ “Boyhood,” Richard Linklater ❏ “Foxcatcher,” E. Max Frye and Dan Futterman ❏ “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” Wes

Anderson; story by Wes Anderson & Hugo Guinness ❏ “Nightcrawler,” Dan Gilroy

✔ And the winner is: Give the edge to “Budapest” over “Birdman” and “Boyhood.” Anderson wins his first Oscar.

A N I M AT E D F E ATU RE ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏

“Big Hero 6” “The Boxtrolls” “How to Train Your Dragon 2” “Song of the Sea” “The Tale of the Princess Kaguya”

✔ And the winner is: “Dragon 2” has

the momentum and is viewed as more of an artistic achievement than its commercial competitors.

C IN E MATO G R AP HY ❏ “Birdman,” Emmanuel Lubezki ❏ “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” Robert Yeoman ❏ “Ida,” Lukasz Zal and Ryszard Lenczewski ❏ “Mr. Turner,” Dick Pope ❏ “Unbroken,” Roger Deakins

✔ And the winner is: Lubezki makes it

back-to-back wins after taking his longdelayed first Oscar last year for “Gravity.”

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THEENVELOPE.COM

❏ “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” Milena Canonero ❏ “Inherent Vice,” Mark Bridges ❏ “Into the Woods,” Colleen Atwood ❏ “Maleficent,” Anna B. Sheppard and Jane Clive ❏ “Mr. Turner,” Jacqueline Durran

❏ “Foxcatcher,” Bill Corso and Dennis Liddiard ❏ “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” Frances Hannon and Mark Coulier ❏ “Guardians of the Galaxy,” Elizabeth Yianni-Georgiou and David White

❏ “Interstellar,” production design: Nathan Crowley; set decoration: Gary Fettis ❏ “Into the Woods,” production design: Dennis Gassner; set decoration: Anna Pinnock ❏ “Mr. Turner,” production design: Suzie Davies; set decoration: Charlotte Watts

✔ And the winner is: “Grand Buda-

✔ And the winner is: Best picture

✔ And the winner is: “Budapest.” And

C OS T UM E DE S IG N

M AK EU P A N D HAIRSTYLING

pest” for the vibrant, parallel world displayed in Canonero’s costumes.

nominees usually win here. Say “Budapest” by a nose.

D OCU M E N TA RY F EATU RE

O R IG I NA L S O NG

S OU ND E D IT IN G

❏ “Everything Is Awesome” from “The Lego Movie,” music and lyrics by Shawn Patterson ❏ “Glory” from “Selma,” music and lyrics by John Stephens and Lonnie Lynn (a.k.a. John Legend and Common) ❏ “Grateful” from “Beyond the Lights,” music and lyrics by Diane Warren ❏ “I’m Not Gonna Miss You” from “Glen Campbell … I’ll Be Me,” music and lyrics by Glen Campbell and Julian Raymond ❏ “Lost Stars” from “Begin Again,” music and lyrics by Gregg Alexander and Danielle Brisebois

❏ “American Sniper,” Alan Robert Murray and Bub Asman ❏ “Birdman,” Martín Hernández and Aaron Glascock ❏ “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies,” Brent Burge and Jason Canovas ❏ “Interstellar,” Richard King ❏ “Unbroken,” Becky Sullivan and Andrew DeCristofaro

❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏

“Citizenfour” “Finding Vivian Maier” “Last Days in Vietnam” “The Salt of the Earth” “Virunga”

✔

And the winner is: “Citizenfour” has a tremendous advantage in terms of awareness. Netflix’s “Virunga” could surprise.

E DI T IN G ❏ “American Sniper,” Joel Cox and Gary D. Roach ❏ “Boyhood,” Sandra Adair ❏ “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” Barney Pilling ❏ “The Imitation Game,” William Goldenberg ❏ “Whiplash,” Tom Cross

✔ And the winner is: “Boyhood.” Shap-

ing a dozen years into a 166-minute movie more than earns this Oscar.

F OR EI G N- LA NGUAGE F EATU RE ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏

“Ida” “Leviathan” “Tangerines” “Timbuktu” “Wild Tales”

✔

And the winner is: “Ida’s” economical running time and cinematography nomination give it the advantage over “Leviathan.”

it’s about time a Wes Anderson movie won this category.

✔ And the winner is: “Sniper’s” popularity steamrolls team to deserved victory.

✔ And the winner is: “Glory.” The

S OU ND M I XI NG

O R IG I NA L S C O RE

❏ “American Sniper,” John Reitz, Gregg Rudloff and Walt Martin ❏ “Birdman,” Jon Taylor, Frank A. Montaño and Thomas Varga ❏ “Interstellar,” Gary A. Rizzo, Gregg Landaker and Mark Weingarten ❏ “Unbroken,” Jon Taylor, Frank A. Montaño and David Lee ❏ “Whiplash,” Craig Mann, Ben Wilkins and Thomas Curley

academy won’t miss the chance to honor “Selma” and the urgent majesty of this song.

❏ “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” Alexandre Desplat ❏ “The Imitation Game,” Alexandre Desplat ❏ “Interstellar,” Hans Zimmer ❏ “Mr. Turner,” Gary Yershon ❏ “The Theory of Everything,” Jóhann Jóhannsson

✔ And the winner is: Prominence of

lush score in “Theory” gives it slight edge over “Budapest.”

P R ODUC TI O N D ES I GN ❏ “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” production design: Adam Stockhausen; set decoration: Anna Pinnock ❏ “The Imitation Game,” production design: Maria Djurkovic; set decoration: Tatiana Macdonald

✔ And the winner is: Another chance to reward “American Sniper.”

❏ “X-Men: Days of Future Past,” Richard Stammers, Lou Pecora, Tim Crosbie and Cameron Waldbauer

✔ And the winner is: “Interstellar.”

Flawed film, but the effects were spectacular. And scientific!

A NI MATE D S H ORT F I L M ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏

“The Bigger Picture” “The Dam Keeper” “Feast” “Me and My Moulton” “A Single Life”

✔ And the winner is: Disney’s dog-

centric “Feast” is the obvious choice.

Then again, most thought the studio’s “Get a Horse” was a slam-dunk last year and it lost.

D OCUM E NTARY S H O RT F IL M ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏

“Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1” “Joanna” “Our Curse” “The Reaper (La Parka)” “White Earth”

✔ And the winner is: HBO’s “Crisis

Hotline” provides a tense, topical look at the day-to-day operations of a suicideprevention switchboard aimed at veterans.

L IV E- AC T IO N S H ORT F IL M ❏ “Aya” ❏ “Boogaloo and Graham” ❏ “Butter Lamp (La Lampe Au Beurre De Yak)” ❏ “Parvaneh” ❏ “The Phone Call”

✔ And the winner is: “The Phone Call” V I SUAL E F F ECT S ❏ “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” Dan DeLeeuw, Russell Earl, Bryan Grill and Dan Sudick ❏ “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes,” Joe Letteri, Dan Lemmon, Daniel Barrett and Erik Winquist ❏ “Guardians of the Galaxy,” Stephane Ceretti, Nicolas Aithadi, Jonathan Fawkner and Paul Corbould ❏ “Interstellar,” Paul Franklin, Andrew Lockley, Ian Hunter and Scott Fisher

is an acting showcase for Sally Hawkins and Jim Broadbent, playing, respectively, a crisis hotline counselor and a suicidal caller.

glenn.whipp@latimes.com

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SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2015

THEENVELOPE.COM BRADLEY COOPER picked

up his third Oscar nomination in as many years for his role in “American Sniper,” the boxoffice smash he also produced.

REVELS IN THE DETAILS

Carolyn Cole Los Angeles Times

By Rebecca Keegan

N

EW YORK — “You’ve got your back to the window, so you’re kind of screwed,” Bradley Cooper said.

Cooper was scanning the room from a high-backed chair, his eyes tracking the waiter carrying his breakfast, the guy in the hoodie tapping away on a laptop near the door, the “at-risk” reporter staring back at him.

Assessing the potential threats in a space — even in a Tribeca luxury hotel on a sleepy December morning with horizontal rain — was a habit Cooper had picked up while making “American Sniper.”

“After that, you’re more aware of everything,” he said of the experience of crawling inside the mind of the military’s deadliest sniper, Chris Kyle.

“He didn’t really leave me.”

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THEENVELOPE.COM The role became imprinted on Cooper in other ways: He gained 30 pounds of muscle, perfected a West Texas twang and learned how to shoot a .300 Winchester Magnum rifle. He also delivered a rugged type of screen stoicism that his “American Sniper” director, Clint Eastwood, made a career of.

For the effort, Cooper, 40, has earned his third Oscar nomination in as many years, after the David O. Russell films “Silver Linings Playbook” and “American Hustle,” a feat only nine other actors have achieved.

And the movie, a best picture nominee that Cooper produced and championed despite others’ doubts about its marketability, has become a box-office phenomenon, earning more than $280 million domestically. Along the way, it has also ignited political debate about the Iraq war and the toll on the people who fought it.

The success for “Sniper” comes at a time when Cooper is performing on Broadway in “The Elephant Man” as a very different sort of man, John Merrick, the deformed Englishman who became a celebrity in 19th century London society.

Cooper plays the role without the use of prosthetics, contorting his arm and face and speaking in a labored, high-pitched voice.

“As an actor, [Chris Kyle and John Merrick] were both very similar in terms of what I had to do physically,” Cooper said, “the fact that I had to change my body chemistry, the physicality as an entranceway into the roles. Both of them, oddly enough, were also very clear as to who they were. Both men felt very planted in the ground.”

Late last year, as “The Elephant Man” had opened to rapturous reviews and “American Sniper” was yet to arrive in theaters, Cooper talked about how the two roles were a culmination of an interest that was sparked when he was 12, growing up in a Philadelphia suburb.

It was then that Cooper saw David Lynch’s 1980 version of “The Elephant Man,” starring John Hurt as Merrick.

“It crushed me,” Cooper said of the Lynch film. “I just felt this real emotional reaction to Merrick’s plight, to how he was able to be so positive and joyful, and saw the goodness in stuff when he was afflicted with this disorder.”

At the time, Cooper’s family said, “ ‘Oh, Brad wants to be an actor. How cute. Go eat some ravioli,’ ” he said.

But after getting a bachelor’s in English

Keith Bernstein Warner Bros.

“BRADLEY was engaged in all aspects of the film and has an unparalleled work ethic and concentration level,” Clint

Eastwood, left, said of his “Sniper” star. “He was very invested in the overall project, as I was when I was young.” at Georgetown University, Cooper studied at the Actors Studio Drama School in New York, home of the James Lipton-hosted “Inside the Actors Studio.” In a 1999 episode of the Bravo show, an earnest, shaggy-haired Cooper asks guest Sean Penn a question from the audience.

Cooper found early work in television, on series “Alias” and “Jack & Bobby,” and in the film comedies “Wet Hot American Summer” and “The Wedding Crashers” before his breakout role as a playboy ringleader in the “Hangover” films helped transform him into a box-office commodity and a People magazine “sexiest man alive.”

After he played a man with bipolar disorder in “Silver Linings Playbook,” Cooper learned about Kyle’s story from a friend, screenwriter Jason Hall, and came aboard the project as a producer before ultimately agreeing to star to get a studio interested.

Cooper never met Kyle, who was killed at a shooting range while helping a veteran on Feb. 2, 2013, — just one day after Hall had turned in his first draft of “American Sniper.”

The project cycled through multiple

possible directors including Steven Spielberg before Eastwood came aboard in the summer of 2013.

As a producer, Cooper was heavily involved in both the planning and the editing room, according to Eastwood.

“Bradley was engaged in all aspects of the film and has an unparalleled work ethic and concentration level,” Eastwood said. “He was very invested in the overall project, as I was when I was young. Being interested in every detail is what drove me to want to direct, and I would not be surprised to see Bradley wanting to direct in the future.” (In fact, Cooper has expressed an interest in directing a dramatic comedy by “Crazy, Stupid, Love” writer Dan Fogelman.)

Critics have praised Cooper’s performance for its naturalism and for humanizing a closely guarded character.

“Bradley’s basically playing a guy who does not reveal his emotions,” “American Sniper” producer Rob Laurenz said.

“Emotion is how you connect with an audience, so to not be able to express it in a big way is hard. You rely on subtleties in the eyes and in the face. It’s a wildly challeng-

ing role.”

Cooper said he knew he was taking a risk by playing Kyle, a man so different from him in background, physicality and bearing, and a political lightning rod to boot.

“I knew I could get crushed for doing this role, but at least I know why I’m doing it,” Cooper said. “It’s so clear to me. I love Chris. That’s all I had to work with. Forget everything else. That’s a huge anchor, you hold on to that.”

Living in New York for the play, he said he still takes the subway and often walks past his old apartment on Barrow Street in the West Village.

Next he plans to bring “The Elephant Man” to London and reteam with Russell on a project with his “Silver Linings Playbook” costar Jennifer Lawrence.

“I get to go to work every day and do something I love to death ... and have people react in a way that I would want them to, that they’re affected by it,” Cooper said. “That’s it, dude. That’s why I’m an actor.”

rebecca.keegan@latimes.com

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SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2015

THEENVELOPE.COM THE CONTENDERS

‘TWO DAYS’ OF SOLIDARITY

By Michael Ordoña

“T

Al Seib Los Angeles Times

MARION COTILLARD said of working with the exacting Dardenne brothers

on “Two Days, One Night”: “They were the clock and I was the hand.”

wo Days, One Night,” Belgium’s foreign-language Oscar entry, boasts the star power of Marion Cotillard under the direction of naturalistic masters the Dardenne brothers.

Like most of the Dardennes’ work, “Two Days” is about the working class — in this case, focusing on Sandra, a woman wrestling both severe depression and an attempt by the management at her company to lay her off by offering her co-workers a bonus if they vote her out. Upon learning an early vote went against her, Sandra talks her boss into holding a second one and uses the weekend to visit and persuade her co-workers to let her keep her job.

“It’s not a very realistic film. In real life, I think Sandra would have lost her employment immediately and there wouldn’t have been this whole story built around her going to see different people, trying to change their minds,” says an energetic Luc Dardennes, at 60, the younger brother by three years.

“Today, people are in solidarity for great humanitarian missions but not for their neighbor. When one is implicated in the situation, it gets harder.”

That can also apply to some actors working for the demanding Dardennes.

The directors rehearse extensively — five weeks on location for this film — and shoot many, many takes. The brothers say some actors have come to them with the “Do with me what you will” attitude, only to swim for shore early in the process.

That was not the case with Oscar winner Cotillard, they say, despite her international stardom.

“That’s what the rehearsal process is for, to get rid of that whole sort of actress image and strip her down to the bare essentials. So the audience members see Sandra and not Marion Cotillard,” says Jean-Pierre, while praising the actress’ work ethic and lack of vanity.

“That was the initial deal we made with her; we wanted to see if we could in-

tegrate her into our family, and she was interested in seeing if she could gain something.”

Cotillard smiles and says, “It was one of my greatest experiences, if not the greatest experience, I’ve had on set with directors. It was really … osmosis between them and I. I really had to find how to connect 100% my rhythm with their rhythm.

They were the clock and I was the hand.

The brothers would shoot long, unbroken sequences and were sticklers about the timing of each moment, even emotional ones. Thus they could shoot up to “80, 90, 100 takes because they really wanted to have the rhythm they had in mind,” says Cotillard.

But the rhythm was both a technical and an emotional beat, requiring specific timing for Sandra to suddenly be overcome by dark waves of despair while hitting exact markers.

“That’s not easy,” says the actress with a gentle laugh. “It’s really like people who build clocks, you have to be super, super precise.”

But these mechanisms were doomed to failure if the central performance didn’t convince of its mighty internal struggle.

“The thing we saw about Marion right away, and it’s written on her face, is that there’s something extremely vulnerable about her,” says Luc. “There’s also a tremendous sort of vitality and aliveness, and we needed both. There’s something else we saw in her immediately, and that’s the melancholy. It’s readable in her eyes.”

Cotillard says, “I’m lucky that I’ve never experienced that kind of depression, although I came close once in my life. I had no taste for anything. I had everything to be happy about, and I was empty. And this emptiness, I felt, helped me to create this character.

“I was lucky not to go deep into depression, but I was also lucky to experience it because everything you experience in your life, even the worst things, is going to teach you something about yourself, about human beings, about the world, about life.

“So, of course, I used it.”

calendar@latimes.com

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THEENVELOPE.COM THE CONTENDERS

‘GLORY’ IS ROOTED IN LOVE Common wanted the song to capture the majesty of the civil rights movement.

By Michael Ordoña

L

ean and handsome, the man whose rap career began more than 20 years ago seems downright earnest when he talks about one of the most tumultuous times in American history.

“It started with love,” says Common, a rap star, poet, film and TV actor, and now an Oscar nominee, in a conference room on the Paramount lot. “One of the first things I learned about the civil rights movement, it started with love. Sometimes love is being able to stand up in the face of something that’s opposing you, not be violent, and stand up.”

Common (born Lonnie Rashid Lynn Jr.) is nominated along with nine-time Grammy winner John Legend for their stirring anthem “Glory,” written for best picture Oscar nominee “Selma.” Common acts in the film as well, portraying civil rights movement strategist James Bevel, who participated in the famous marches led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Common was delighted to be approached by director Ava DuVernay about playing Bevel, although he didn’t know much about the man.

“I just wanted to be a part of ‘Selma,’ ” he says, noting he became interested in the script four years ago, before DuVernay came aboard. “This is really what I’m aligned with, something that’s very purposeful.”

When the film was in postproduction, DuVernay contacted him about writing a song for the film’s end credits.

“One thing she wanted was to show that the movement was radical,” he says.

“Nonviolence is still radical.... It takes a lot of strength to be nonviolent in the face of violence. She wanted it to have the majesty — Dr. King had something that’s majestic.

The movie was epic but intimate. [The song] also had to be big, universal, speaking to all the multitudes of people. But it had to keep the radical aspects and the majesty — and the love.”

Bob Chamberlin Los Angeles Times

THE RHYMES by Common hit hard and touch on current events.

He recites the song’s lines, “ ‘The biggest weapon is to stay peaceful.’ They said love was the greatest weapon they had.

‘Our music is the cuts that we bleed through.’ That’s love in the music.”

Before those lyrics came together, though, the rapper says he had an “epiphany” to recruit Legend to write the song’s musical framework and chorus. He reached the nine-time Grammy winner while Legend was touring Europe. Legend enthusiastically agreed, saying he had one day off: “I’m going into the studio on Wednesday,” he told Common.

“I said, ‘OK,’ and laid back down — I was in my bed,” says the rapper, “and

these three titles came into my head. The third was ‘Glory.’ [Legend] took that title and wrote the piano part and the chorus [‘One day / when the glory comes / it’ll be ours / it’ll be ours’] and sent it to me. I got it that Thursday morning and said, ‘Oh, my God, this is beautiful and special.’ It hit my heart and my soul.”

While Legend’s chorus provides uplifting gospel sweep, Common’s rhymes can be hard-hitting. The song references Rosa Parks and also “why we walk through Ferguson with our hands up,” a reference to the protests in Ferguson, Mo., after the shooting death of unarmed black man Michael Brown by a white police officer.

“That shows the fight’s still going on.

We’re still in the fight,” says the rapper.

“Also, ‘One son dies; his spirit is revisiting us’ is playing on the Christian idea of the spirit of God being with you. But I’m also using the comparison of the young people being killed, whether it’s Jimmie Lee Jackson [from the Alabama marches depicted in ‘Selma’] or Mike Brown.

“The song is about winning the fight.

‘War is not over, victory’s not won,’ but one day it will be. If one group or nationality wins something and everybody else is not equal or given the same benefits, then everything’s out of balance. The war, the fight, the glory includes every walk of life, every nationality, every sexual preference.

It’s all of us.”

The song also addresses the institutionalized racism of the time with the lyric, “I saw Jim Crow under a bald eagle.”

“Some of the injustices were being presented as the American Way,” Common says. “‘We have to keep America pure and clean.’ Like integrating with black people would make it dirty. ‘This is why you can’t use our water fountains or eat at the same restaurants,’ or ‘You don’t deserve the right to vote; it’s going to mess up the American Way.’ [America] wasn’t supposed to be based on inequality; it was supposed to be justice for all. But sometimes people can misuse the phrase ‘the American Way.’ ” He’s interrupted by a phone call. It’s his grandmother.

“She really loves ‘Glory,’ ” he says, with a big smile. “She doesn’t listen to my music like that; different generation. She’s 86.

She lived through this. She saw the film, she was moved by the film, ‘This song is incredible.’ That’s deep, man.

“This is the best project I’ve ever been a part of, from all aspects — what it’s given me as a human being and the impact it’s having in the world. It’s a proud moment to know that my daughter, who’s 17, my mother and my grandmother all went to see ‘Selma’ at the same time. And they took their friends. I’ve never been a part of anything that could bridge those generations. So this is definitely a proud moment.”

calendar@latimes.com

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SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2015

THEENVELOPE.COM

“BOYHOOD,”

directed by Richard Linklater, left, and starring Ellar Coltrane, Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke, has six Oscar nominations.

Brian van der Brug Los Angeles Times

IN THE MOMENTS

BY GLENN WHIPP >>> “Boyhood” premiered more than a year ago at the Sundance Film Festival, “sneaking up on people,” as writerdirector Richard Linklater puts it, despite the fact that he had spent the previous 12 years making this singular coming-of-age story. Now, after winning the Golden Globe Award for motion picture drama and countless prizes from critics’ groups, Linklater’s $4-million movie isn’t taking anyone by surprise. Nominated for six Oscars, including nods for picture, director, screenplay and actors Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke, “Boyhood” stands as one of the award season’s frontrunners, a distinction that still blows Hawke’s mind.

“It never occurred to me that this would be more successful than something like ‘Waking Life’ or ‘Before Midnight,’ ” Hawke says, naming two of his collaborations with Linklater. “I figured it’d play in a few art house theaters and then 30 years from now I’d be doing a Q&A at the Berlin Film Festival saying, ‘But the film I really liked was “Boyhood.” ’ ” Why did Linklater’s experimental film, which follows Mason (Ellar Coltrane) from first grade to the moment he arrives at college, connect with audiences now and not decades later? Linklater, Hawke, Arquette and Coltrane all believe it has to do with relatability, something they understand innately as they each brought so much of their own lives to the movie. “Boyhood” hits universal truths about family, but for this quartet, the 12-year journey of making the movie was a deeply personal experience.

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THEENVELOPE.COM Linklater: “Boyhood” came from my own relationship with my mom, who Patricia’s character is based on. She’s a passionate woman who just followed that passion and took her kids through it. She was a young mom who went back to get her graduate degree, started teaching and, yeah, didn’t have a whole lot of luck with men, though a lot of that is me reconciling. Don’t forget: “Boyhood” comes from the kid’s perspective.

Arquette: When Rick offered me the movie, I had already lost my mom. I was mourning her. Like the mom in the movie, she had gone back to school and had gone on to teach. Like so many mothers, she was taken for granted, including by me. But so much of that doesn’t dawn on you until you become a parent yourself.

Linklater: You need a generation to go by before you can fully grasp a moment from your past. You have continuing conversations with your parents — even if they’re no longer around — when you start parenting yourself, where you think, “Ah. So that’s what they must have been feeling then. I get it.”

IFC Films

Hawke: My father and Rick’s father are PATRICIA ARQUETTE, who plays Mason’s mother, says parenthood brings new insight into your own parents. both extremely soft-spoken men from Texas who are both in the insurance busiHawke: My oldest is 16 now. She doesn’t rattles off all these memories because Arquette: We have these goodbyes in ness, and both found happiness in a second remember a life when I wasn’t making this she’s seeing him in all these periods of his our lives with people we love. Every time marriage. My father is a huge part of my movie. You know what she said? “It’s so life. When I look at my grown son today, somebody dies, even though it’s a natural own psyche. weird that a movie of my generation, it’s almost like different people — who he event, we’re still shocked. And the moyou’re the dad. It’s just so weird!” ments of breaking away are also shocking was as a baby, who he was at 8, 16. Saying Linklater: My dad was a super go-withand hard to move through. You grow up goodbye to your kid is like seeing a flashthe-flow guy. The dad you see in the movie Coltrane: Even though I didn’t entirely forward of all these different little persons. and have kids and then they go off to is probably closer to me, the guy who’s realize it as a child, I was very vulnerable “You’re leaving? All of you?” school and you think, “Oh, my poor pulling the car over and saying, “Hey, we’re on the screen in a way that people don’t mom.” I remember when she started going to talk to each other!” often see. And now when I meet people, Coltrane: It’s the first time Mason sees crying and I said, “Well, I gotta go.” I they reciprocate that, expressing these his mom as human, which is a pretty should have hugged her right away.

Hawke: Starting the movie, I thought, beautiful, tender things to me. It’s exciting. powerful moment growing up. I was in a “If I could take that man I remember when I similar place, healing my relationship with I hope it gives filmmakers fuel to be more Linklater: That image of Patricia was 5 years old and then take that man that brave. People are ready for it. my mother, so it reflected that. It’s a great sitting alone at the table when Ellar’s came to my high school graduation and moment when you’re able to see your leaving came from my own memory. show the maturing process, that’s a porArquette: I’ve had people love my movWhen I left [my mom] for college, she was parents as flawed and forgive them for it. trait that’s never been done on film before.” ies. Many people have showed me their just sitting at a table alone, smoking a “True Romance” tattoos over the years.

Linklater: Editing the movie, I’d be Linklater: Ethan and I talked about how cigarette. She seemed odd, and it took me But “Boyhood” ... people tell me the wildgoing back in time, looking at something years to realize it might be some emoyou look up to your dads as a kid, and then est things. with little kid Lorelei and 20 minutes later, tional deal. Then when my own daughter you get older and you see them in middle Twice I’ve had girls tell me they turned I’d be sitting at the dinner table with this [Lorelei, who plays Mason’s sister in the age, a life of doing what they had to do to much older girl. Usually, you never want to to their boyfriends right after the lights movie] was leaving, I realized, “Oooooh. raise your ass. The corporate suit. The slow went up and said, “I want to have a baby.” watch your movies again, but this one, as Now I understand.” And I knew my change in vehicles. My dad had a cool car Who knows? A few months from now, we a parent, I go along with it. I made a film daughter had no idea what I was feeling. when I was young, a big, old, beautiful might have a lot of babies named Mason that works on me, which is impossible as a She couldn’t. She’s 18. That’s not the way Chevy. That gives way to a more practical running around. filmmaker. Watching it at a film festival, I it works. Parenting is a one-way thing. choice. And, speaking from experience, get a little teary because this movie was so minivans are great! But that transition’s a glenn.whipp@latimes.com all-encompassing.

Arquette: When Mason leaves, she sad moment on the cool scale.

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SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2015

THEENVELOPE.COM

Star Michael Keaton and director Alejandro G. Iñárritu reveal a few bumpy moments — including running around in public in underwear and asking Mother Earth for help — while filming ‘Birdman.’

MICHAEL KEATON

is nominated for “Birdman.”

Ricardo DeAratanha Los Angeles Times

BIRD’S-EYE VIEWS OF CLIMACTIC SCENES

BY GLENN WHIPP >>> “What’s in this? Rum? Whiskey? I guess I’ll find out ...” ¶ Why not? On a glorious December afternoon, Michael Keaton is up for anything, including downing a shot of a secret-recipe eggnog offered by a Santa Monica restaurant’s owner. (We’re guessing rum, by the way.) The main topic on the table is, of course, Keaton’s acclaimed turn in “Birdman” as Riggan Thomson, the Hollywood has-been trying to jump-start his career by staging — as writer, director and star — a Broadway adaptation of a Raymond Carver short story. We had questions about three of the film’s key scenes, and Keaton provided answers as best he could. Later, “Birdman” writerdirector Alejandro G. Iñárritu helped fill in the missing blanks. (Yes: Spoilers ahead.)

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THEENVELOPE.COM After a rooftop epiphany, Riggan decides to go out with a bang on stage, spilling his blood, as New York Times theater critic Tabitha Dickinson would later put it, “both literally and metaphorically.”

Keaton and Iñárritu agree it’s the film’s key scene, but for a while, they wondered if it would work at all.

Keaton: I wasn’t ready for this. I got caught off-guard because we had been shooting all day and it was late, and we were setting up and I’m going, “What are we talking about doing now?”

It hit me. “Oh, my God. I thought that was tomorrow.”

Then I started to feel a little sense of panic. I wasn’t sure if Alejandro and I had ever talked about this scene. And as I’m hearing him talking about it, I suddenly realized, “I see what he’s seeing now, and I’m not necessarily sure I see it that way.”

But then I started thinking, “I’m not sure how I ever saw it.”

And it’s the white-hot part of the movie. I will admit that I started getting scared. And scared is not something I get.

Then it was like Birdman was starting to talk to me, and I was really getting mad at myself for not being on top of it.

Iñárritu: That’s a very funny thing. We rehearsed in Los Angeles, and the first couple of days were very hard for Michael.

He was struggling. He was rusty. He was thinking that we were just doing the blocking. But I wanted the emotion too.

Then we came to do that last scene, and he did it with a pace and rhythm that, for the first time, I saw the character there. I turned to Chivo [cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki] and said, “Exactly!” We both saw it. From that moment, Michael started understanding that this was not a high comedy. It was seriously funny. But not funny. That was the first time he did it right.

And now, when it came time to film it, he forgot the whole thing.

Keaton: I just could not get it. It’s usually in here somewhere around me, and I’d get it when I’m in the scene. But I did it again, did it again, did it again, and now I was getting frustrated. I went backstage and told Alejandro, “It’s not there, man.” And he knew it.

Iñárritu: When we did the first pass, there was no emotion. Second take the same. Third take and he was more lost.

And if that scene doesn’t work, it would be a disaster. It was the dramatic, emotional pinnacle for the character.

Also, I was paying 1,000 extras sitting

‘I took the dailies home, and I remember I couldn’t stop laughing for hours ... it was like a silent-film Buster Keaton performance.’

— A LEJANDRO G. I ÑÁRRITU , “Birdman” director

Alison Rosa Fox Searchlight Pictures

“BIRDMAN” director Alejandro G. Iñárritu, here contemplating a scene

with Michael Keaton, left, has won the Directors Guild of America Award. in the theater — and it was the last day we had the theater. So it was now or never.

And I bring Michael to this little room backstage and I tell him, “You remember the rehearsal? I don’t know what image, emotion or memory you connected with that day, but return to that.” And he was really nervous. He said, “Give me three minutes by myself.”

Keaton: I was out of things to think about, out of things to feel. I was so empty that I just reached this really interesting state that’s never happened to me before.

I just did this thing that got me out there.

And when I was on stage, everything stopped for a minute and I found it. Alejandro loved it. He’s a hugger. He couldn’t stop hugging me.

Iñárritu: Later, we had a drink, and I asked, “What happened in those three minutes?” And he told me he just opened his shirt and lay down with his stomach on the floor and asked Mother Earth, “What is truth? What is the truth now?

Help me.”

Which I thought was a beautiful way to find an answer to something that is impossible to know. Truth is everything. And he found his truth through that process, which I found poetic and primitive and beautiful.

An earlier scene, which finds Riggan forced to march through Times Square in his underwear after being locked out of the theater, also caught Keaton offguard, if only because he had subconsciously dismissed it from his mind after first reading the script.

Keaton: Actors will say yes to anything.

Then the day comes and you think, “What happened between the time I read it and the time when I’m dropping my pants?”

Iñárritu: We got four takes. I knew the situation would deteriorate once people [in the crowd] discovered what we were doing. Everyone would be looking in the camera, saying hi to their moms.

The one idea I had was to hire this band to play drums to distract the crowd. So we cued them to start playing, and that’s when Michael begins his run.

Keaton: My favorite part of that sequence is the robe getting stuck in the door. I’m not sure I nailed it. But I liked the idea of this guy thinking, “If I don’t stand upright. If I walk like this ...” (Keaton pops up to demonstrate Riggan’s would-be furtive, hunched-down speedrun.) “... then maybe no one will see me.”

People ask if that scene was hard.

“Hard” is a non-issue. You’re just in it.

There were little flashes, yeah, “I’m in my underwear.” But that was a good feeling to have. The sweet spots of that scene for me were the robe, the trying to get away, signing the autograph and the entrance to the theater. In one take, I switched the fake gun from one hand to the other. That was so much fun.

Iñárritu: I took the dailies home, and I remember I couldn’t stop laughing for hours. All the little details he brought ... it was like a silent-film Buster Keaton performance.

The film’s ending has generated much debate. After shooting himself on stage, Riggan lands in the hospital, where he’s visited by his ex-wife, daughter and manager. He has a new nose — and an apparent new lease on life. But that doesn’t stop him from climbing out on the windowsill. When his daughter returns to the hospital room, she finds it empty. She goes to the window and looks down. Nothing. She then looks to the sky and a smile washes over her face.

Keaton: That ending wasn’t in the original script. Alejandro wrote it while we were making the movie. And when he read it to me, it made perfect sense. I know what it means for me now, but who’s to say that won’t change in a month? Or five years. Its beauty lies in its ambiguity. You don’t know. I don’t know.

Iñárritu: There are as many ways to interpret the ending as there are seats in that theater. And I’ve probably heard every one of them. [Laughs.]

glenn.whipp@latimes.com

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SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2015

THEENVELOPE.COM THE COSTUMES

DESIGNS ON DIFFERENT WORLDS

BY JANET KINOSIAN >>> Not too many costume designers work on two Oscar-season films in the same year, but Colleen Atwood takes that kind of pressure in stride. She took on the fairy-tale musical “Into the Woods,” based on Stephen Sondheim’s beloved Broadway hit and directed by Rob Marshall, along with Tim Burton’s bio-drama “Big Eyes,” about kitschy painter Margaret Keane.

“They’ve each been made by really great directors, and that makes my job easy — OK, easier,” says the three-time Oscar winner, whose work on “Woods” garnered her a staggering 11th nomination. Atwood took some time out from her latest project, the “Alice in Wonderland” sequel “Through the Looking Glass,” to chat with the Envelope about working on two such distinct projects.

What was the design challenge for “Big Eyes”?

Separating all the different worlds that the story went through — from the small Midwestern town feel in the beginning to the explosion of the ’60s in San Francisco, to Los Angeles, Hawaii, etc. — and still try to keep Margaret [played by Amy Adams] as real as we could based on the research we had. Amy Adams is an amazingly subtle actress, so her clothes shouldn’t scream, “I’m from 1961.” The time period should blend away in a period film and you see the people inside it, making it look as a whole.

Which is the opposite of “Into the Woods.” What was the overall challenge there?

I wanted to marry and unify the overall look of the film, and it came about as I was looking at the trees and I was mesmerized by the wood and the beautiful leaf shapes, so I used that [wood theme] to create textiles for the film.

For example, Jack’s trousers had that vertical twig thing going on.

Yes, and Meryl’s [Streep, who plays the

Leah Gallo The Weinstein Co.

AMY ADAMS’ subtlety as an actress

led to quieter costumes in “Big Eyes.”

Peter Mountain Disney

MERYL STREEP worked closely with designer Colleen Atwood on her nu-

merous fittings and color choices for her costume and wig in “Into the Woods.”

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THEENVELOPE.COM Witch] costume had a slight leather cording and satin sewn onto a chiffon background that gave it a wood-like texture, and it could twist and still be lightweight. We used ribbons for the second one with the poufy sleeves.

How involved is director Rob Marshall in the costumes?

He’s very concerned about the costumes serving the physical needs of the actors. Since he comes from a big dance background, he has a really good eye for how something’s going to move and how something is going to look moving in an environment. Visually, he’s very strong and reactive, and I show him everything before I make it.

He definitely understands it all.

I understand Johnny Depp came up with the idea of using a zoot suit for his Big Bad Wolf costume, true?

We were talking about the Wolf, and I was going more with a lifelike wolfshaped body and with a longer tail, and he said, “Oh, let’s do a zoot suit.”

And also the music was an inspiration because it had a kind of jazzy thing to it. So we went with a zoot but a more animated zoot from the cartoons. I collaborated with an embroiderer who figured out how to make the “fur” collar and tail from thread. They used to make wigs like this in the ’20s, and I’ve always been fascinated by it and wanted to use it some way, and so this was a very good opportunity.

How involved was Meryl Streep with her costumes?

Meryl is a very prepared actress; she definitely gave me lots of fittings.

We worked on the costumes to make sure they could do what she needed them to do. And we collaborated with Roy [J. Roy Helland], her longtime hair and makeup artist, and we came up with the idea of having the dress and the wig be the same tonality [of blue]. It was an exciting thing when we tried that wig on — that’s one of those moments, and not to mention you’re not just trying it on anyone, you’re trying it on the Meryl Streep.

What about some of the other fairytale costumes?

For Little Red Riding Hood, I messed around with a lot of stuff, and I ended up with the right color red in

Peter Mountain Disney

COSTUMES for many “Woods” char-

acters have a more folk vibe.

this very thin lambskin suede, because the velvet was a little clunky, silk was kind of too light. The lining was a really red taffeta.

Rapunzel’s was a thin, washed silk taffeta in a very pale pink with a layer of pale green over it, which gave it a glow. I was playing around with a bondage theme, so I came up with the idea of using satin ties wrapped around her middle and arms. It had a ghostly, glowing quality.

The princes were very different characters. Rapunzel’s prince was a nod to the classical rebel bad boy, and then Cinderella’s Prince Charming had to be every girl’s prince, the fairy-tale prince.

Cinderella’s stepmother and stepsisters were quite a group. I chose black with taupe because I wanted a positivenegative design and I didn’t want it to be black and white. I tried brighter colors, but we decided to go with the more muted, dark colors.

The Baker and his wife had more folk costumes, more traditional Brothers Grimm, a slight vibe toward that German look. Her top was made of tiny pieces of velvet and printed silk sewn together with cording going through it, to again have that bark quality.

calendar@latimes.com

Bruno Dayan Disney

IT WAS Johnny Depp’s suggestion to have his Big Bad Wolf in “Woods” wear a

zoot suit, says Atwood. The “fur” collar and tail were crafted from thread.

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SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2015

THEENVELOPE.COM ANIMATION

DRAWN TO THE UNDERDOGS

BY NOEL MURRAY >>> In a year without a Pixar film — or “Frozen,” for that matter — the animated feature Oscar race is as wide open

as it’s ever been. By now, anyone with an interest in animation (or anyone with kids) is aware of the Big 3 studio picture nominees: Disney’s “Big Hero 6,” DreamWorks Animation’s “How to Train Your Dragon 2” and Focus Features’ “The Boxtrolls,” all of which stand a solid chance to win. But there are two remaining, somewhat out of left-field nominees, that may be unknown to most audiences. Here’s a quick look at the Irish film “Song of the Sea” and Japan’s “The Tale of the Princess Kaguya,” both distributed in the U.S. by Gkids, a small, relatively new company based in New York.

“The Tale of the Princess Kaguya” The films of the Japanese animation titan Studio Ghibli have been niche favorites in the United States, but they’ve been wildly popular with the academy, which has previously nominated three Ghibli films and given an Oscar to one (“Spirited Away”).

Last year’s nominee, “The Wind Rises,” may end up being the final film from Studio Ghibli’s co-founder Hayao Miyazaki. This year’s “The Tale of the Princess Kaguya” may be the swan song of Miyazaki’s partner, Isao Takahata.

Based on a Japanese folk tale, “Princess Kaguya” is a beautifully illustrated film about a bamboo farmer who discovers a magical child in the forest and moves her to the city to raise her as royalty. Between the good intentions of the farmer (who looks a little like Takahata) and the young girl’s yearning to lead a simpler life, “Princess Kaguya” has a gentle, elemental pull. But what most people will notice is the animation, which resembles loose charcoal sketches.

“Kaguya” producer Yoshiaki Nishimura says, “The concept for the style is derived from the abbreviated line drawings in traditional Japanese paintings, particularly picture scrolls. Many Japanese animation films have pursued the achievement of a sense of reality and truthfulness in their images by drawing dense and detailed scenes. But in this film, by decreasing the density of the pictures and abbreviating the lines, we sought to arouse the audience’s imagination.”

Gkids

“Song of the Sea” Tomm Moore’s debut feature, “The Secret of Kells,” was a surprise nominee in 2010, so it’s no surprise now that the academy was just as enthusiastic about Moore’s gorgeous follow-up. Inspired equally by Eastern European animation, Hayao Miyazaki’s “My Neighbor Totoro,” the Irish film “Into the West” and Disney’s “The Jungle Book,” Moore’s “Song of the Sea” is about a boy named Ben who embarks on a journey through a mystical wilderness in search of his mute younger sister, Saoirse — who may be one of the last of the legendary seal-humans known as selkies.

Moore brings a luminous, dazzlingly patterned 2-D animation style to the telling of a story rooted in folklore and the dreams of children. He started work on “Song” during the end stages of “The Secret of Kells.” (“Someone told me it’s a good idea to start your second film before finishing the first one. That way you don’t lose steam,” Moore says.) But it took time to secure financing and to come up with something that lived up to the promise of “Kells.”

“In some ways, yes, it was the ‘difficult second album,’” Moore acknowledges. “For me, I wanted to show another aspect of Irish folklore than what we showed in ‘Kells’ and make a much more personal film.”

calendar@latimes.com

Gkids

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THEENVELOPE.COM THE CONTENDERS

CREDIT LONG PAST DUE

By James Rocchi

C

onsidering how the subject of “The Imitation Game,” British scientist Alan Turing, was the creator of the proto-computer, it’s only fitting that Norwegian director Morten Tyldum is using one of the most ubiquitous fruits of that revolution, a cellphone, to talk to the media about his lauded film: “If it sounds bad, it’s because I’m grocery shopping with my wife.”

Tyldum, best known in this country for his slick, smart art-and-murder thriller “Headhunters,” made his English-language debut with “The Imitation Game.” A crowd-pleaser that won the Audience Choice Award at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, it’s the story of how Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) invented, and built, electronic computing devices in the 1940s to crack the until-then unbreakable German Enigma code — a war-winning scientific advance on par with the work of the Manhattan Project to create the atomic bomb. Turing then fell into depression and apparently committed suicide after the war when exposed as a homosexual, which, in Britain then, was a crime.

Did you know this story before the script found you?

I thought I knew who Alan Turing was.

I’ve always loved history, and I was actually shocked by how little I actually knew. I was amazed this wasn’t common knowledge. Why wasn’t he on the front covers of my history books? He’s one of the great thinkers of the last century, and he was sort of pushed into the shadows. The importance of making this movie and spreading the legacy of this man becomes so big.

A big part of the film is not just explaining

Bob Chamberlin Los Angeles Times

“IMITATION GAME” director Morten Tyldum says it was important to affirm the legacy of scientist Alan Turing.

Turing’s work to break Enigma, it’s also explaining how Enigma worked. How hard was it to convey that information to show the enormity of the challenge?

It’s an incredible challenge, not only explaining it but explaining it in a way that’s thrilling, that doesn’t get in the way of the human emotions or the rhythm of the movie. Trying to explain Turing’s work in encryption and decryption? It’s complicated. And we said, “There are some people who won’t get this, and we don’t care.”

We wanted a movie for smart people.

On a lighter note, Benedict Cumberbatch is a superb actor, but were you ready for the fact that to a number of fans he’s like a very tall Beatle?

He is! He was a huge star in the U.K. when we cast him, but it shot up disproportionately while we were shooting. And Benedict’s a very sensitive man; I think he was in the process where he was dealing

with all of it. I know that we’d have paparazzi outside, and he would have to act, and there were paparazzi taking pictures of him. I know that frustrated him. He loves his fans, and he’s very devoted to them ... but the press and the paparazzi?

He’s an actor, through and through.

The film’s come under some fire for not explicitly and directly addressing Turing’s homosexuality while others are praising it for its boldness in showing it.

Is that a balancing act that, in the end, might not make everybody happy?

I think you hit it on the head. He wasn’t first and foremost a gay man; he was first of all a brilliant man, who did amazing things, the forefather of the computer, the man who broke Enigma ... and he was prosecuted and wrongly crucified for being a gay man, and it was an important part of him. I think it’s almost to our credit to say that [we have a gay character without] the

need to have a sex scene that has nothing to do with the narrative, plot and characters; plus, historically, Turing described his time at Bletchely [working on Enigma] as “a sexual desert.”

As the inventor of the computer, would Alan Turing be delighted we’ve all got them in our pockets now with cellphones, or would he be dismayed we’re using them for “Angry Birds” and “Candy Crush”?

Alan Turing loved games! He didn’t call [his scientific thought-experiment] “The Imitation Test”; he called it “The Imitation Game.” He loved games, he loved puzzles; he created his own board games. He was playful in many ways. I think he’d be a little surprised — he said in 60 years we’d be unable to tell a machine from a human being, and that hasn’t happened ... yet.

calendar@latimes.com

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SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2015

THEENVELOPE.COM

BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH says

“The Imitation Game” “packs quite a punch.”

HE’S ON TOP OF HIS ‘GAME’

BY GLENN WHIPP >>>

Benedict Cumberbatch is chasing the sun. Fresh off an island vacation with fiancee Sophie Hunter and just out of a steam at the Parker Palm Spring’s sauna, Cumberbatch is moving his patio chair clockwise around a firepit on a chilly January afternoon. “There’s no shame today,” says Cumberbatch, clad in gray sweatpants and a vintage Pink Floyd T-shirt. “I’m going back to England where it’s like the Arctic Circle. I need to store up the sun now, otherwise I’ll get rickets by the time I step off the plane.”

Cumberbatch has landed in Palm Springs along with the rest of the cast of “The Imitation Game” to accept an ensemble award at the Palm Springs Film Festival. The movie, a look at the life of Alan Turing, the Cambridge genius who led the team that cracked the Enigma code that Nazi Germany used to encrypt their radio transmissions during World War II, premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September and recently earned eight Oscar nominations, including nods for picture and Cumberbatch’s lead turn.

We moved right along with the 38-year-old actor as he shifted his chair to account for the dying light and spoke about his eventful journey between Toronto and Palm Springs.

You look a lot more relaxed than when I saw you last in Toronto.

It was a really steep incline toward Christmas, just crazy, finishing “Richard III” [which will be featured in the BBC’s “The Hollow Crown” series], getting ready for the holidays, moving around seeing different families. That was a big induction this Christmas. A whole new world opens up. And then we were able to just breathe, be in the present tense, be in one place, just relaxing and ... [Cumberbatch leans forward and drops his voice to an excited whisper.] That’s Robert Duvall!

Wow! [Duvall, also in Palm Springs for the festival, walks by on a path about 20 yards away.]

I’ve never met an actor who doesn’t idolize him. Have you ever met him?

He’s one of the masters. I haven’t met him. I’d love to.

Maybe tonight at the gala?

As a fanboy, yeah, to just touch the hem of the garment. But at the same time, to Kirk McKoy Los Angeles Times

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THEENVELOPE.COM ard III, Hamlet, Sherlock ... are there three of you? You’re setting the bar too high. It’s hard keeping up with you.

Cumberbatch: What I fear, if the work gets diluted, people will go, “Well, he just took on too much.” But, to be honest, I just can’t turn down those opportunities.

Oyelowo: Somehow, I don’t think people are going to be saying, “He spread himself too thin.” [The two talk a bit more before Oyelowo takes his leave. I tell Cumberbatch, who hasn’t yet seen “Selma,” that some have said the movie isn’t fair to President Lyndon B. Johnson. “The Imitation Game” has also caught flak, with a few critics saying the movie should have shown Turing’s sexuality on screen.]

Jack English The Weinstein Co.

MANY MORE FILMS could be made about Alan Turing, says Benedict Cumberbatch of the genius he portrayed.

get a meaningful moment, you need to be away from the circus. That’s why I’ve enjoyed the acting roundtables I’ve done in this roar. You get to have a free-flowing conversation about acting stuff.

Have you learned anything from those conversations?

Well, you have that moment where you meet your heroes and, initially, they’re just something “other.” And then the common ground of what we do for a living erases that. The best thing about the job is that it breaks down class and age and sex and race, and transcends those things. You’re never one person. You’re always part of a team.

The fundamental thing I learned was how many actors said there’s not a singular way of approaching the job, which is a relief to me. The first person who told me that was Meryl Streep. We were making “August: Osage County,” and I said, “I hate to do this, but it’s an opportunity to talk about your process. How do you start? You’ve got the depression, the alcoholism, the cancer, the grief, so many states. It’s so richly comic and deeply

upsetting at the same time.” And she went [Cumberbatch does a dead-on Streep impersonation], “I don’t really have a singular approach. I wouldn’t be able to do half the things I’ve done if I had one way of working. Sometimes it’s outside in, sometimes it’s inside out.” And I thought, “Oh, God. I adore her!”

What about practical advice for negotiating Hollywood? What’s the best you’ve heard?

“Always take Fountain.” Wasn’t it Bette Davis who said that? That’s come in handy many times. Because the traffic on Sunset ... forget it.

That’s it?

I’ve been chugging away in my career 10 years. That helps you prepare for the exposure. And there are things now which make it easier to escape the obsession with self. If you have someone you love and you’re devoted to them, and it’s a proper devotional love — as I do in my life — there’s nothing better than that tonic.

First of all, you have your world between you and that person. But also, being de-

voted to that person takes you away from yourself. There’s someone more important. Not that that’s a reason to be in a relationship, but it’s a very healthy byproduct of it when you’re doing such an obsessional job, as acting can be.

You once said your greatest regret was not being a dad by the age of 32. Why 32?

When I was growing up, I had a weird obsession with 32 being the mark of adulthood, and that was part of what I thought that might mean, naively. It was just a hunch about a number. I was always a bit of an old soul. I wasn’t really interested in being young. I mean, I wasn’t eccentric.

But I’m glad it didn’t happen. Things happen for a reason. And I’m definitely with the right person for that. So, no regrets ... [Actor David Oyelowo, who plays the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in “Selma,” approaches.] David! How are you? The back of your head is everywhere.

As I was driving in last night, I kept seeing it all over the place.

Oyelowo: I’ve got one of the most famous backs of heads in history. But you ... Rich-

How do you balance legacy and storytelling in movies like yours and “Selma”?

You can’t do one without the other.

The argument with ours, that you don’t see him being sexually active, upset me because we weren’t shy of it. I’m not interested in the vanity of a character or my own vanity as an actor. The idea that for a second I would want to do that or the film would do that is perverse.

The whole structure of the film is about showing a man who had a life that wasn’t allowed. So, what, you need to prove that he was gay by seeing him be with a man? Whether it was something we needed to see because it was very much a part of his life is another argument, but I would argue that in our paradigm, it just would have looked really stuck in for good measure .... It would have looked distasteful.

There could be another movie made about that aspect of his life.

There are so many movies to be made of this story. We have only two hours. It packs quite a punch, our film. At one moment, it’s war-espionage thriller, the next moment a tragic story of a man wronged by an intolerant society, the next moment a celebration of someone who’s different.

Everyone has a version of the story they want to see, and I completely respect that. And, obviously, they are going to have to respect me being defensive about it because I’m in the thick of it, trying to be fair and uncompromising in my portrayal of this great man.

glenn.whipp@latimes.com

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THEENVELOPE.COM

THERE, IN THE MOMENT

BY RANDEE DAWN >>> Actors receive Academy Awards for great performances, not scenes; at least, that’s the party line. But the fact is that in any great acting performance there is a small gem that outshines the rest, one in which a character takes on another dimension and transcends the material. That moment, which can be subtle, grand, underplayed or outsized, is something rare and special, something worthy of an Oscar. Here, producers, directors and writers tell us what they think was that special moment for the nominees for lead actress and actor.

Felicity Jones | ‘The Theory of Everything’ The setup: Jane is instructing her husband, Stephen Hawking, who has just had a tracheotomy and cannot speak, in how to use a spelling board so they can communicate.

Christine Plenus Sundance Selects

Marion Cotillard | ‘Two Days, One Night’ The setup: Cotillard as Sandra is in a car with her husband, Manu, when Petula Clark’s “La Nuit n’en Finit Plus” (“Needles and Pins” in the U.S. version) comes on the radio, which amplifies her desperate situation.

Key scene: “Marion, with just her smile and very slight changes in the intensity of her gaze, brings to life Sandra’s struggle with depression, her love for Manu and, at the same time, her feeling of not existing, her intense sorrow at not being able to rid herself of this feeling that keeps haunting her. The extraordinary thing, in our eyes, is that Marion does all this without turning it into a feat of acting or a display of her art. Therein lies her great talent.”

— Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne (directors)

Julianne Moore | ‘Still Alice’ The setup: On her first visit to a neurologist, an anxious Alice runs through a battery of tests that begin to reveal the Alzheimer’s she will soon be diagnosed with.

Sony Pictures Classics

Key scene: “In the beginning of the scene, she’s full of confidence and dismissive of some of the questions, but slowly you see her losing her confidence, and that process is key to her underlying fear. The whole story is right there, in her eyes, nose and mouth. It’s a four-minute scene, and we don’t cut away.”

— Wash Westmoreland (co-director)

Key scene: “Felicity [as Jane] is trying to hold herself together and be practical and unemotional as she instructs him on how to use this board. But Stephen doesn’t want to play ball. Instead, his mouth moves and no words come out, and when that happens she makes us feel her despair that she’ll never hear her husband speak, and all that facade of strength crumbles. Without saying a word, she conveys that huge sense of loss.”

— Anthony McCarten (screenwriter-producer)

Liam Daniel Focus Features

Rosamund Pike | ‘Gone Girl’ The setup: At the beginning of the film, Amy Dunne appears to be a sweet, supportive wife to husband Nick. But as the film plays out, we begin to see that she is manipulative and even murderous. At the beginning and at the end of the film, there are scenes in which she slowly turns her head to the camera while lying in bed.

Key scene: “The bookend is a nice framing device for recontextualizing all that you’ve just seen. It’s that touchstone where you say, ‘She’s so sweet,’ and at the end it’s the most malevolent look of ‘I love you honey’ you’ve encountered. She gets her arms around the whole thing, in all of it. The nuttiness of it, and then the specific, underplayed moments of it. When I saw it all strung together, it’s a character with such a varied topography.”

— David Fincher (director)

Merrick Morton 20th Century Fox

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THEENVELOPE.COM Reese Witherspoon | ‘Wild’

Steve Carell | ‘Foxcatcher’

The setup: Distraught by the death of her mother and spiraling out of control, Cheryl makes a decision that will change her life: to hike the Pacific Crest Trail.

The setup: Troubled heir John du Pont takes an unusual interest in a pair of wrestling brothers and ends up killing one.

Key scene: “The scene where I was moved beyond belief was when she was shoveling snow with this raw abandon, and we feel her making a decision and she says, ‘I’m going to walk myself back to the person my mother thought I was.’ Her performance in this moment was so emotional for me because what she was experiencing on the hike and what she had experienced in the past came together so beautifully.”

— Bruna Papandrea (producer)

Key scene: “The last few minutes. No dialogue, yet so haunting. As Steve drives away, you see him in profile, mouth opening; he seems to extend his teeth like a killer snake. The whole film adds up in these nonverbal moments and focuses us with such intensity and sensitivity that the nuances in Carell’s expressions roar with meaning.... His silent end is sad and poetic and a little subversive.”

— Jon Kilik (producer)

Benedict Cumberbatch | ‘The Imitation Game’

Bradley Cooper | ‘American Sniper’

The setup: After World War II, Alan Turing, who created a machine called Christopher to break a key Nazi code and help the Allies win the war, has been prosecuted for being homosexual and is forced to undergo chemical castration.

The setup: Marksman Chris Kyle is an expert at taking down the enemy from afar, but his mental state and personal life crumble once he leaves the battlefield.

Warner Bros.

Key scene: “It’s such a clever performance

by Bradley because an audience can only connect to a character through emotion, but here he’s playing someone who is compelled to always conceal his emotions.

Bradley found these subtle but powerful ways to reveal the character’s true feelings.

It’s not until the scene in the bar near the end that his tough exterior begins to crack and we really see what he’s going through.

But throughout we get glimpses of it, such as when he tells the psychiatrist, ‘That’s not me.’ You can see in his eyes that he has doubts.”

— Robert Lorenz (producer)

The setup: Stephen is being toasted by Jane and his friends after receiving his doctorate. He’s not quite physically debilitated yet, but he’s becoming impaired.

The setup: In a rare quiet moment, Riggan and his ex-wife (Amy Ryan) recall moments in their shared history.

calendar@latimes.com

Jack English The Weinstein Co.

Key scene: “It’s impossible not to be touched by the last scene when you see Benedict play the broken Alan Turing.

You see the deep emotion in how he is trying to control himself through all the pent-up sorrow from losing both Christopher and the freedom to work. All that, in addition to the fear he feels of being alone, begins to overwhelm him, and it’s just heartbreaking. Benedict’s performance is precise and dignified yet ugly and brutal.”

— Morten Tyldum (director)

Eddie Redmayne | ‘The Theory of Everything’

Michael Keaton | ‘Birdman’

Key scene: “He’s lying down in the dressing room, where he and his [ex-wife] are talking about their past and what happened between them. It’s such a quiet and intimate moment; the rest of the film is so crazy and frenetic and wild, but here you get to see this warm and intimate moment. I loved those scenes with Amy.” — John Lesher (producer)

Scott Garfield Sony Pictures Classics

Anne Marie Fox Fox Searchlight

Fox Searchlight Pictures

Key scene: “The scene opens with Eddie having the wit and mischievousness of Stephen Hawking, but you also watch him experience how his vibrancy is slipping away from him. He’s having an emotional revelation watching everyone who has complete control over their body. You see him realize how separate he’s going to be from everyone else.”

— Lisa Bruce (producer)

Liam Daniel Focus Features

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SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2015

THEENVELOPE.COM

STARS DISCOVER THEIR MUTUAL ORBIT

Jay L. Clendenin Los Angeles Times

EDDIE REDMAYNE and Felicity Jones realized they had a cosmic connection in “The Theory of Everything” when their individual acting processes overlapped.

E

ddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones had an idea — and both will now admit that the notion was “completely bonkers” — on the second day of filming “The Theory of Everything,” the moving portrait of the

marriage between theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking and his first wife, Jane Wilde. The actors were shooting a scene that takes place shortly after Hawking is diagnosed with a motor neurone disease (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS) in which Jane finds Stephen in his Cambridge dorm and tells him that if he doesn’t play a game of croquet with her, she “won’t come back here again, ever.”

Stephen relents, angrily, and you worry

what he might do with the mallet once he starts playing.

“It was such an important moment where Stephen is so vulnerable and exposed,” Jones says, “and we wanted to make sure that those emotions came across.” Redmayne, smiling, joins in: “So, while the camera was on me, playing croquet, Felicity was off-camera, shouting abuse at me full-throttle just to throw me off-kilter. It was a way of building trust.

But we hadn’t told anyone we were going to do it, so people were looking at us, thinking, ‘Dear God, they hate each other, and it’s only Day 2.’ ” Jones laughs. “And maybe the trust wasn’t quite there yet between us, but it was after that. It was the feeling of ‘We’re in this together and we’re going to sink or swim together.’ ” It’s safe to say now, a year after filming that scene, that the two made it to shore.

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THEENVELOPE.COM

Actors Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones have earned accolades for their collaborative portrayal in ‘The Theory of Everything,’ the story of Stephen Hawking’s career and his complex, interdependent first marriage.

“The Theory of Everything” premiered in September at the Toronto International Film Festival, winning strong reviews for its depiction of both Stephen Hawking’s career and a complex, interdependent marriage. Based on the notices and the enthusiasm with which academy members have embraced the movie, Redmayne and Jones could become the first pair of actors playing a married couple to win lead Oscar nominations since Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening for “American Beauty” in 1999.

If that happens, both actors will happily ascribe their success to the collaboration with “Theory” director James Marsh but also with each other. During a leisurely poolside conversation on a recent Sunday afternoon, just before heading over to participate in a post-screening Q&A at the film academy’s Samuel L. Goldwyn Theater, the two Britons formed a mutual admiration society, finishing each other’s sentences, laughing heartily at comic inventions (Jones proposed making “Theory” via the “Boyhood” method, returning to film annually over the course of the 25 years we see the Hawkings) and thanking the stars that they shared a similar acting process.

“We both like to have lots of time, lots of preparation and lots of takes,” Jones, 31, says. “It would have been a nightmare if Eddie ...” And here Redmayne, 32, jumps in (we mentioned this happens a lot): “... if I said, ‘Let’s wing it.’ That would have been rather awkward. What if I only wanted to do two takes?” Jones doesn’t hesitate. “I would have grabbed that croquet mallet and bashed your head in.”

Marsh picked up on his actors’ shared ways of working immediately, encouraging them to play scenes as written several times and then draw on ideas gleaned from rehearsals to try something new.

“Every minute of every day, we were on the precipice of failure, which is an exciting place to be,” Marsh says. “Because being out on that ledge and trusting their instincts, Eddie and Felicity dared to try interesting things that weren’t in the script or weren’t asked for. That off-camera provocation from Felicity during the croquet

Liam Daniel Focus Features

ON THE SECOND day of shooting, Felicity Jones and Eddie Redmayne began

bonding using some unconventional techniques during a croquet scene. scene? That wasn’t the only time they did that. But it only works if the actors thoroughly understand the psychology of their characters.”

It’s a psychology that evolves as we follow the Hawkings’ courtship at Cambridge, falling in love at the school’s May Ball in 1963 and then moving through Ste-

phen’s diagnosis and their marriage, which produced three children. The film shows both the toll the disease took on their relationship and the numerous ways they rose above it and triumphed. That’s a lot of ground, requiring a physical and emotional commitment from both actors that was often as thrilling as it was daunt-

ing.

The best times of the 48-day shoot (“Beyond short,” Redmayne moans) came when the pair discovered moments on the fly. There was the May Dance scene, in which Stephen and Jane spin each other around, an image that found its way onto the movie’s poster. (“There needed to be an element of dance,” Jones says, “since so much of the movie is about how Stephen’s movement becomes impaired.”)

There were the occasions when they incorporated the humor and vitality that went hand in hand with the family’s challenges, such as when the kids used Stephen’s wheelchair as a go-kart or put naughty words in his voice machine. Or the improvised scene, the final one Jones and Redmayne shot together, in which sitting in bed, Stephen whispers to Jane, “Thank you,” which, Redmayne says, was “one of those weird moments when life and art meet because I was so grateful to Felicity for all she had done for me.”

Of course, after all that, there was still the matter of showing the movie to the Hawkings and nervously awaiting their reaction. Jones phoned Jane, and they talked at length. “She was generous with her praise,” Jones says. Stephen’s review amounted to two words: “Broadly true.”

Recently, he updated his thoughts on his Facebook page: “Seeing the film has given me the opportunity to reflect on my life.

Although I’m severely disabled, I have been successful in my scientific work. I travel widely and have been to Antarctica and Easter Island, down in a submarine and up on a zero-gravity flight. One day I hope to go into space. I’ve been privileged to gain some understanding of the way the universe operates through my work. But it would be an empty universe indeed without the people that I love.”

“Now that I have a bit of perspective,” Redmayne says, “I’m really left with the transcendent quality of what this family achieved.” Adds Jones: “I hate sounding grandiose, but the story rises above its parts. It becomes about the frailty of being human.”

glenn.whipp@latimes.com

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SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2015

THEENVELOPE.COM

HOW WILL THEY VOTE?

By Glenn Whipp

With Oscar ballots now out, we asked three members from different branches of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to dish, anonymously, about their voting choices.

Here’s what they had to say:

THE PRODUCER Male, 50s, white, previous Oscar nominee PICTURE “Boyhood” just bowled me over. It embodies so much love, and that’s a rare thing today. The concept behind it is fascinating, but the results are what distinguish the film. I liked other movies — “Birdman” is a stylistic tour de force, and “American Sniper” was an amazing, complex film made by one of our greatest directors — but “Boyhood” is the one that has stayed with me all these months.

DIRECTOR It’s been great to see a certain light shined on Richard Linklater. He has such humility, and his love for his subjects really comes across in his movies. I mean, come on, this is a rare moment where we can honor something so unique and original.

ACTOR Michael Keaton just tears you up and is hysterically funny in “Birdman,” but Bradley Cooper just continues to astound me. There’s not a false note in what he does in “American Sniper.”

Some people complain that the movie isn’t complex enough, but it’s all there in his performance, the way the character falls into these patterns. It’s shattering.

ACTRESS It’s crazy that Julianne Moore has never won. She just continues to floor me, and I thought she was fantastic in

“Still Alice.” I’m really excited to hear her name called.

SUPPORTING ACTOR J.K. Simmons gives a big, juicy performance in “Whiplash,” but I found it less surprising over time. Mark Ruffalo in “Foxcatcher” ... there’s always a great subtlety to what he does. That workout scene between him and Channing Tatum at the beginning communicates so much in gesture.

SUPPORTING ACTRESS Patricia Arquette gives “Boyhood” its pulse. The conflict and tension emanating from that mother character and her bad choices in men is so interesting.

And I loved watching her and Ethan Hawke age. That was fascinating to see unfold.

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY I want to vote for Paul Thomas Anderson and “Inherent Vice.” Anyone who takes on Thomas Pynchon deserves a prize. But I wanted that movie to explode more on the screen. “Imitation Game” ... the story is riveting, but I found it less compelling than “The Theory of Everything,” which was really well done in the way it focused on the relationship.

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY There’s a lot of great work in this category. Wes Anderson is such an original, creative industry unto himself. He’ll always be fine. I’ll come back to “Foxcatcher” with writing that is understated and nuanced with tons of subtext.

Maybe it’s all subtext. I like that.

[See Academy, S49]

Illustrations by

Pete Ryan For The Times

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THEENVELOPE.COM

THE THINKING BEHIND THREE BALLOTS [Academy, from S48]

THE DIRECTOR Male, 50s, white, past Oscar nominee PICTURE “Boyhood” moved me. Some of the others feel like Oscar bait. And while “Boyhood” wasn’t a perfect picture, it was a pretty accurate depiction of real life. And that’s the kind of movies I like.

DIRECTOR Richard Linklater. Conceptually and in terms of execution, “Boyhood” was a remarkable achievement. And he’s just a great director. He’s built a body of work that’s great too, so many good films in different genres.

ACTOR Eddie Redmayne did a great job in “The Theory of Everything.” There’s a little bit of “My Left Foot” in there, but it’s something uniquely its own thing.

There are so many things that could have gone wrong with that performance but didn’t. You’ve got to hand it to him.

ACTRESS Julianne Moore. I didn’t think the movie was terrific.

But it didn’t stink. And she was great. Honestly, I was just watching her performance, and not only was it a technical marvel, the way she charted the progression of Alzheimer’s, but it was emotionally devastating.

SUPPORTING ACTOR I loved “Whiplash” and J.K. Simmons. It’s a great performance by a hardworking actor, a guy that’s been acting for a while who finally has the spotlight shine on his abilities. That

glenn.whipp@latimes.com

makes me feel good. There are so many good actors in Hollywood like him, people just waiting for their chance to show what they can do.

SUPPORTING ACTRESS Patricia Arquette was so believable playing the mom in “Boyhood.” Like J.K. Simmons, she’s been good for a lot of years too.

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY I thought the script for “The Imitation Game” was better than the film. It was well written and worked on a lot of levels. “Whiplash” seemed more like a performance and directorial achievement. Like that drum solo at the end. It’s great, but on the page, it’d be pretty spare.

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY I liked “Nightcrawler” as a screenplay, but I want to give as much love to “Boyhood” as I can. It so beautifully captures ordinary dialogue and a depiction of real life.

Illustrations by

THE ACTOR Female, 60s, white, Screen Actors Guild and British Academy of Film and Television Arts nominee PICTURE None of these movies really excited me ... with the exception of “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” which I thought was amazing. Very clever and smart and a beautifully realized world.

DIRECTOR It’d have to be Wes Anderson, right? I think this is his best movie, and he’s made some good ones.

ACTOR Michael Keaton did an incredible job in “Birdman.” The movie itself was a little overdone, but he kept it grounded with that performance.

ACTRESS Julianne Moore. What else can be

Pete Ryan For The Times

said about her? She’s an actor’s actor, someone who brings so much integrity and truth to the work.

SUPPORTING ACTOR J.K. Simmons. Everyone else is going with him, aren’t they? I don’t think I’ve heard anyone else’s name brought up in this category all year.

SUPPORTING ACTRESS I loved Emma Stone in “Birdman.”

She’s one of the best young actresses working today, and I’d watch her in anything. If she’s in it, I’ll go see it.

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY “Whiplash” was great. Damien Chazelle ... that’s a filmmaker to watch in the future.

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY Nightcrawler” is an instant classic.

The way it captured the madness of both the main character and broadcast news itself was thrilling.

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THEENVELOPE.COM ON WRITING

BY DAN GILROY >>>‘NIGHTCRAWLER’

RULES MADE TO BE BROKEN

T

HE NIGHTCRAWLER SCREENPLAY reads like this ... no interior or exteriors ... no day or night ... it’s one, long RUN-ON SENTENCE tracing the career path of a young man named LOU BLOOM … there are minimal descriptions … no parentheticals to indicate action or emotion … and the text changes from this size to

THIS SIZE

in an effort to break through the page and visually engage the reader ...

This writing style was the final element to fall into place after a journey that began years earlier when I saw the work of a freelance crime photographer named Weegee who prowled New York City in the 1940s. The idea for the film took shape when I moved to Los Angeles and discovered the modern equivalent: nocturnal videographers who roam the Southland in the never-ending search for a story.

I loved the intersection of crime, art and commerce. I loved that I’d never seen this world on screen. I thought it would be plot-driven.

And then the character of Lou appeared.

He has no back story, no arc, is often unlikable and gets rewarded for all the wrong reasons. Maybe it was a reaction to the restrictions of studio scripts, but it was

Ricardo DeAratanha Los Angeles Times

DAN GILROY veered from his habits while writing the “Nightcrawler” screenplay, for which he’s an Oscar nominee.

liberating to break the rules. My hero was my villain, and I learned as I went along.

Writing it became a balancing act — trying to make Lou simultaneously engaging and terrifying — with the fear that a step too far in either direction would reduce the film to satire or a sociopath study.

I learned antiheroes are great vehicles for ideas and observations, forcing other characters to bend around them and holding a mirror to the world. I learned they can create humor, as the gulf between their perceptions and reality drift into the absurd.

I wrote it on spec, so I was working alone. I wrote most of it in a hotel room in London over a period of a few months. I never really adjusted to the time there, so I found myself writing at night, when the

majority of the film is set.

I’m a morning person, but I became nocturnal, like the character. I usually follow an outline, but this time I put it aside. I normally give pages to people I trust, but this time I worked in seclusion.

Every habit was going by the wayside. It was unnerving at first, but I felt in tune with the character and the story.

The film became very personal, and I knew early on that I wanted to direct it. I flew to Atlanta while Jake [Gyllenhaal] was shooting “Prisoners.” We instantly bonded and became creative partners.

Jake didn’t change a word of the script, and I always championed his desire to create and explore. I wrote the part of Nina for Rene [Russo], who found a depth and vulnerability only hinted at on the page.

The one sticking point for several financiers was showing the implied sex scene between them. I declined to change the script and take their money because there’s nothing I could show that would match what the audience imagines is happening behind closed doors.

I believe writing is rewriting and spend the first half of most days doing just that.

With “Nightcrawler,” the first draft became the production script, which has never happened to me.

The entire process, from finding the right screenplay style to shooting, reminded me of something important, something I knew but had maybe forgotten: It’s fun to break the rules.

calendar@latimes.com

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SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2015

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THEENVELOPE.COM ON WRITING

BY JASON HALL >>>‘AMERICAN SNIPER’

WEIGHTY MARCHING ORDERS

T

he number on my caller ID wasn’t one I recognized, but it said, “Midlothian, Texas,” and I knew it was the widow of Chris Kyle calling. He was the most lethal sniper in U.S. history, and, after four tours of duty in Iraq, he was gunned down in Texas while trying to help a veteran. That was 10 days earlier.

I wrote a screenplay about Chris, and we’d become friends in my two years of knowing him. I had texted him and told him I was turning in his script, then I made a joke only a sailor could love.

“LOL,” he texted back. I turned in the script and the next day he was killed. It took every ounce of my courage to answer that call from his grieving widow. Hello?

Taya Kyle doesn’t mince words. “If you’re going to tell this story, you need to get it right … ,” she said, then her voice collapsed. I waited in silence until she could continue, “because, for better or worse, this movie is going to play a part in how my kids remember their father.” The weight of that sounded unbearable. But she was right. Those kids were 6 and 8, and I know what precious little I remember from that age; vague memories and faded photos fill the gaps as the texture of life slips away.

But film lives forever. The burden was mine. For better or worse.

I first met Chris in 2010, less than a year out of the Navy. He was standing on Texas soil, but I was looking into the eyes of a man still struggling to make it home. The military complex spent millions of dollars training him to fight, but after a decade of war, they didn’t train him to come home and find peace. There was the memoir yet to be written that would be called “American Sniper.” It told of his exploits with unapologetic detail but seemed to contradict the turmoil I saw in his eyes.

I never got to the bottom of that turmoil with Chris, so it was a war story I wrote. It had overtones of his relationship with his wife, but it read like the story of Achilles in Iraq. Then Chris was taken from us. The hero dies at the end. It changed everything.

Mel Melcon Los Angeles Times

JASON HALL, the “American Sniper” screenwriter, was told by Taya Kyle:

“This movie is going to play a part in how my kids remember their father.”

Taya and I spent four hours on the phone that first day. Three hours the next. Days turned to weeks. This is the same way she had conducted her marriage with Chris for those 10 years, over a cellphone. I didn’t try to console her or put a Band-Aid on her grief; I was building a character, so I asked the most personal questions I could. I tried to peel away the layers of this complex man, and she revealed him to me like only a wife can.

She was fragile but brave, and there was lots of crying, but she took me from their first kiss to their last. She revealed the tenderness of the man who had charmed her with sincerity and conviction and loved her until she could love herself.

My questioning allowed her to relive their lives together, and to grieve. And as my understanding of him grew, so did the space between her tears. It was the beginning of a long road, but what seemed a burden became a privilege. That unknown caller revealed a story of beauty and loss to me, unlike any I’ve ever known.

Everyone who came onto this movie, from Clint Eastwood on down, was gifted the same privilege. It felt like an honor to be able to tell their story because it’s not just the story of what is sacrificed when we send one man to war. If we are, indeed, the United States of America, what affects one man affects us all. His pain is our pain; his story is ours; a nation with a knack for aggression and an overwhelming desire to protect the flock, and the price we will pay. This is our sacrifice. For better or worse.

Those kids won’t see the movie for several years, but she did. Taya saw it and she stumbled out crying and hugged me.

“I don’t know how he did it,” she said of Bradley Cooper’s performance. “You brought my husband back to life. I just spent two hours with my husband.” I hope those kids remember their dad, but if their memories fade and the texture slips away, we had the privilege of getting it right.

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ECHOES OF EXCELLENCE

BY LISA ROSEN >>> It’s usually an easy game, comparing best picture nominees to previous winners as a way to gauge their chances for

the big O. There’s almost always a current film that can be likened to such classics as “Rocky” or “The Sting.” Until this year. The remarkable, original entries in this year’s best picture category make our annual look at the resemblance to past winners all the more challenging.

“My Fair Lady” still wields influence, as does the great “Gandhi.” But a few reaches and mash-ups were required this time, along with one double dip that just couldn’t be helped. So what does all this say about their Oscar chances? Probably nothing, but it’s fun to consider.

“Boyhood” | “Cinema Paradiso” At first, “Boyhood” proved a stumper, with its unusual approach of filming the same cast over 12 years. But “Cinema Paradiso,” 1990’s foreign-language film winner, bears some striking comparisons. Both show the cumulative effects of time’s passage on the life of an observant, curious boy being raised with a sister by a single mom. Quotidian moments at home, school and play guide both stories, rather than large plot contrivances. But, by the end, those moments add up to pack an unexpected punch.

Miramax

IFC Films

“Birdman” | “The Artist” “Birdman” was another technical wonder, seemingly using one very long take to underscore the tension building around an actor wrestling with his demons. But thematically it has much in common with 2011’s winner, “The Artist,” which also used unusual filmic techniques — black and white, silent — to reveal a performer’s rise, fall and ultimate flight.

Fox Searchlight Pictures

The Weinstein Co.

“The Theory of Everything” | “A Beautiful Mind” The story of Stephen Hawking’s brilliant work, unfolding alongside overwhelming limitations, conjures up 2002’s winner, “A Beautiful Mind.” In both, the love of a great woman gave the scientist a new lease on life.

Liam Daniel Focus Features

Eli Reed Universal Studios

“The Imitation Game” | “Lawrence of Arabia” The story of Alan Turing’s brilliant work, unfolding alongside overwhelming limitations — OK, so it also conjures up “A Beautiful Mind” just a wee bit. As portrayed in “The Imitation Game,” Turing is practically incapable of interacting with other people, but the support of his only friend, Joan, helps him, for a time anyway. Let’s also throw in a dash of “Lawrence of Arabia,” 1963’s best picture about a brilliant misfit who ignores his commanders’ orders to blaze a bold new path they can’t understand. Both feature a dishy Briton in the lead role to boot.

Jack English The Weinstein Co.

No unpublished caption

TNT

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“Selma” | “Gandhi” Brilliant, charismatic men abound this season. “Selma” takes a powerful look at the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s campaign for voting rights, using nonviolent noncooperation against virulent opposition. An exceptional, pragmatic leader, he learned from another such peaceful warrior, Mohandas K. Gandhi, whose campaign against British oppression in India was depicted in 1982’s “Gandhi.”

Atsushi Nishijima Paramount

Columbia Pictures

“The Grand Budapest Hotel” | “Grand Hotel” In its depiction of a sumptuous hotel on the verge of catastrophe, “The Grand Budapest Hotel” harks to “Grand Hotel,” which won in 1931-32, complete with a cavalcade of stars and a glorious tapestry of plotlines — even a murder to solve. A few of those threads, involving clever escapes and duplicity in an exotic locale, also evoke memories of 1942’s “Casablanca.”

Fox Searchlight

MGM / Getty Images

“American Sniper” | “The Hurt Locker” “American Sniper” takes a hard but sympathetic look at the effects of war and the specialty work of Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper), just as 2009’s “The Hurt Locker” observed the effects of war and the specialty work of a bomb disposal soldier on its hero. Both are seen as masters of their respective skill as well as victims of the unbearable pressures caused by the work and the battlefield.

Warner Bros.

Summit Entertainment

“Whiplash” | “My Fair Lady” Too bad “The Hurt Locker” is already taken. The brutality depicted in “Whiplash” between a jazz professor and his drumming student could easily cause post-traumatic stress disorder.

Instead, we’re going to have to go out on a limb here to 1965’s winner, “My Fair Lady.” In both films, a young raw talent falls under the tutelage of a teacher whose methods border on sadism. (Mouthful of marbles, anyone?) To top it off, they both have unforgettable soundtracks. You can almost hear “Whiplash’s” Andrew (Miles Teller) singing, “I could have drummed all night ...”

Daniel McFadden Sundance

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THEENVELOPE.COM OSCAR TRIVIA

IMPROVISE YOUR ANSWERS

BY MICHAEL ORDOÑA >>> Protagonists in this year’s best picture nominees include a mathematician, a disabled theoretical physicist,

a concierge, an aspiring jazz drummer and a teen who neither learns kung fu nor goes missing. Got no question on that one, it just struck us funny. Anyway, here are this year’s nominees for Oscar Trivia Stumpers. In honor of Sundance champ, Spirit contender and multiple Oscar nominee “Whiplash,” these questions riff, jazz-like, off the current crop of hopefuls. Good luck to all — to the nominees and to you!

1

ABC — Alec Baldwin Closes: If Julianne Moore wins for “Still Alice,” why might Baldwin suddenly become one of the most sought-after costars in town?

10. The British Ministry of Information collected that one for their World War II propaganda film. They were nominated for two other documentary Oscars that year as well.

9. Jared Leto (“Dallas Buyers Club”), whose band, 30 Seconds to Mars, counts among its hits “The Kill.” That single stayed on the Alternative Songs chart for more than 50 weeks.

2

His performance was unreal: Four of this year’s lead actor nominees are up for playing real people. Who was the last actor to win for playing a purely fictional character?

8. “Lose Yourself” by Eminem from “8 Mile” (2002) and “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” by Juicy J, Frayser Boy and DJ Paul from “Hustle and Flow” (2005).

3

I’m Birdman: Michael Keaton, a two-time Batman, is nominated for playing an actor trying to escape the long shadow of another costumed hero in “Birdman.” Who is the only actor or actress to ever be nominated for a performance in an actual comic-book movie?

7. Mo’Nique, former stand-up comedian, hostess of “Showtime at the Apollo” and well-known comic actress, for “Precious” (2009). Before her, there was Jamie Foxx, formerly of “In Living Color,” for “Ray” (2004). No, we’re not counting Octavia Spencer (“The Help,” 2011), who was always known as an actor in comedies rather than a comedian per se.

6. It was nominated in every acting category (director David O. Russell’s second straight film to earn that distinction), which is awesome, and it lost all 10 of its nominations, which is awesomely uncool.

4

C’est si bon: Who is the only performer to win for a French-speaking role?

5. Meryl Streep (supporting actress for “Kramer vs. Kramer”) and Cotillard.

5

No repeat, no surrender: Of all those nominated in the acting, directing and writing categories, only two have ever won in the categories in which they are presently nominated. Who are they?

Rap party: If “Glory” wins for original song, it would be the third rap honoree (it’s half rap, but it wholly counts here).

What were the other two?

10

Who’d like to thank the academy?

Who was the recipient of the 1942 honorary Oscar for “Target for Tonight”?

ANSWERS

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1. Baldwin will have played husband to the last two lead actress winners (Moore, should she win, and Cate Blanchett for “Blue Jasmine”). He’s a catch, ladies.

Wild and crazy Oscar winners: “Foxcatcher” might have been about meeting American women in bars if the Festrunk brothers had directed it. Steve Martin had nothing to do with the film, but

9

Way more than half a minute: What winner of an acting Oscar has had three No. 1 singles on Billboard’s Alternative Songs chart and had the single that set the chart’s record for longevity in 2006?

2. Jean Dujardin, “The Artist” (2011), although the character may be inspired by such silent-film stars as Douglas Fairbanks, John Gilbert and others.

7

Johanna Goodman For The Times

Second City and Daily Show alum Steve Carell is nominated for it. Who was the last performer who made his or her fame as a comedian to win an acting Oscar?

3. Heath Ledger was posthumously nominated and won as the Joker in “The Dark Knight” (2008).

The ol’ bait and switch: Last year, “American Hustle” became the 15th film ever to accomplish what super-cool thing and the third ever to accomplish what gnarly thing?

4. Current nominee Marion Cotillard, for “La Vie en Rose.” Don’t try any of that Jean Dujardin stuff with us! That’s a non-speaking role with one line — in English — at the very end.

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