Chris Hemsworth: Not a Thor Loser

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Interviews

Published on Thursday, 29 September 2011 05:07

Written by Frank Lovece

Chris Hemsworth was almost a Thor loser. That's because to snag the role of the Norse god-superhero in the Marvel Comics movie Thor, recently released on DVD and Blu-Ray, he had to undergo a six-month auditioning process that included competing with his actor brother Liam Hemsworth (The Last Song) for the part.

Obviously, it all worked out for the Australian former soap opera star, who moved to the U.S. and made his mark as George Kirk, father of the young James T. Kirk, in the movie Star Trek (2009).

Two small releases followed, as well as co-writer Joss Whedon's The Cabin in the Woods and the remake of 1984's Red Dawn, both completed and awaiting release next year.

Hemsworth, 28, was born in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, and raised both there and in "Northern Territory, in a little Aboriginal community in the Outback, [called] Bulman."

As he describes, "My earliest memories were on the cattle stations up in the Outback, and then we moved back to Melbourne and then back out there and then back again. Certainly most of my childhood was in Melbourne" -- where he attended high school at Heathmont Secondary College -- "but probably my most vivid memories were up there [in Bulman] with crocodiles and buffalo. Very different walks of life."

His parents, Craig and Leonie Hemsworth, later moved to Philip Island, where Hemsworth lived as well, he says. Aside from his younger brother Liam, he has an older brother, Luke. Hemsworth is married to Spanish actress Elsa Pataky.

He's reprising his role as Thor in Whedon’s upcoming Marvel film The Avengers, set for a May 4, 2012, release, and Thor 2, scheduled for release July 26, 2013.

Hemsworth also plays half the title role, opposite Kristen Stewart, in Universal’s upcoming Snow White and the Huntsman, also starring Charlize Theron.

We spoke with him by phone from Australia.
 
Q. You and your younger brother Liam were both up for the part of Thor, and I gather it took forever to get you cast.

A. Yeah. I auditioned very early on and then I was out of the mix and he was in the mix, and then I got a second chance to come back in. I guess I sort of messed it up for whatever reason. Then I was asked to send in another tape toward the end of the casting process.

My mum was visiting me at the time in Vancouver [where The Cabin in the Woods was shot], so she read Anthony Hopkins' lines [in the role of Thor's father, Odin] and held the camera and helped me with the audition. So she kind of got me back in there, I guess, as well.
 
Q. A boy needs his mom.

That's right. And Liam and I would run [through the script] together and try to work out what we thought Ken [director Kenneth Branagh] wanted or what we thought of the character. We're pretty competitive in everything else we do, as brothers are, but this tended to be a bit of a team effort.
 
Q. Were you and Liam living together at the time?

A. No, we weren't. He'd just moved to the States and I'd been there for a couple of years, so it was great having him around.
 
Q.  You come from a soap opera background and in this movie you're working with against RADA-trained Anthony Hopkins and Tom Hiddleston, Oscar-winner Natalie Portman, Ray Stevenson from the Bristol Old Vic. How do you psych yourself up to play the central role around those kind of people?

A. People like that elevate your game, and if you leave yourself open to learn from them and walk in with humility, I guess then it becomes back-and-forth. On-set experience in general, I think, is the key. It's about feeling comfortable in navigating your way around a set.

And whether it's a soap or whether it's classic theater, it's all about your attitude: Just work hard and be open to exploring different ideas and taking risks and going with the spontaneity of it all.
 
Q. Did anybody -- I'm thinking Hopkins in particular -- come down, put his arm around you and say "Here's a piece of advice?"

A. No, he treated me very sort of equal. I certainly walked in very intimidated. I'm thinking "God, how am I going to pull this off?" and couldn't have felt more supported by him.

He'd ask me about my [physical] training programs and what have you. He was on a real health kick and was on the treadmill every morning and lifting weights. It was all very sort of, I guess, normal in a sense.

I expected to walk in and have these great quotes to come away from and what have you. But what impressed me was his enthusiasm for work, how friendly he was and what an interesting person. The whole cast is just a good group of people to be around.
 
Q. So you’re at Comic-Con last summer on the Thor panel, and all of sudden Robert Downey, Jr. and Scarlett Johansson, your co-stars in The Avengers, pop up on stage with you. You’re a young actor, now they're your peers -- what goes through your mind?

A. I was just waiting for security to pull me off the stage at that point, you know? There's a big part of me going, "What am I doing up here? I don't belong here in amongst these guys." It was so exciting. I didn't actually know that we were going to do that -- they kept it a big secret from us as well.
 
Q. Did you get to chat with them backstage?

A. I did a little bit. I don't know how much I said that was of any great interest. It was all filtered by my brain going, "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, what is this?"
 
Q. "Mr. Downey, I've always liked your work."

A. Yeah, it was a bit like that.
 
Q. So how does one play a god when the god isn't, say, Jesus?

A. It became about humanizing it, in a sense. The sets and the story and the costumes tell us the larger-than-life elements, and for us [actors] Ken kept saying, "Just make this personal. It's a scene between a father and son, or two brothers. Find the truth in it."

Someone said to me a long time ago, "If you're ever playing a king, it's more about how the other actors relate to that character as opposed to what that character does." They all lean in, listen very carefully to him, or they speak to him in a certain tone or bow or whatever.

Q.  You battle one of the most amazingly visual Marvel antagonists, the Destroyer. In this case was it a guy in a costume, was it animatronic, was it CGI?

A. Yeah, there was sort of a reference point to how high it was or what exactly I was looking at, but that was certainly the most computer-generated villain I was fighting in the film. The rest, most of the time, were actual people in costumes and what-have-you.
 
Q. What was it like the first on the set? The first day of a movie really sets the tone.

A. I remember it was in the Frost Giant world on a big set with ice glaciers and things. I remember thinking how huge it all was and [Branagh] was incredibly excited.

The scenes I wasn't in, I'd watch him behind the camera or at the video village, watching him getting really excited and jumping up and down at certain moments of the sequences.

He looked like he had a great amount of fun, and certainly did through the whole thing.
 
For more by Frank Lovece, visit http://franklovece.com.

Mighty Movie Podcast: Pamela Yates on Granito: How to Nail a Dictator

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Interviews

Published on Sunday, 11 September 2011 14:56

Written by Daniel Persons

Listen, there’s nothing particularly wrong with a documentary about the war between two Donkey Kong champions; it’s very good, actually (it’s King of Kong, in fact). It’s just that you have to admit that there’s a considerable span between that and a film that has a tangible effect in seeing a man responsible for genocide called to justice.

The one thing Pamela Yates knew while filming When the Mountains Tremble in 1982 was that she wanted to see the Guatemalan generals in charge of the slaughter of Mayan villagers punished for their crimes. It took over two decades, but when the legal team preparing the case against former dictator General Rios Montt were preparing their case for the international court, they turned to Yates and her hours of out-takes for evidence. Granito: How to Nail a Dictator is not only about Yates’ quest for the incriminating footage, but a personal recollection of her time shooting Mountains in 1982 and, ultimately, an examination of justice can only be served through the courage and determination of many hands. It may not give you insight into how to make it to the 22nd level, but it’s a heartening testament to the notion that, if people will it, monsters can ultimately be vanquished.

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Josh Hartnett

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Interviews

Published on Saturday, 03 September 2011 05:00

Written by Brad Balfour

With Bunraku, an archly stylized swordplay fantasy, 33-year-old actor Josh Hartnett returns to the genre spotlight playing an enigmatic drifter appropriately called "The Drifter."

This computer-enhanced tale revolves around Hartnett’s character, a "Man with No Name," and draws heavily on Samurai and Western tropes in an alternate-world dystopia where guns are banned and the sword is king (as it was in Japan until the end of the 19th century).

The film’s title is based on bunraku, the 400-year-old form of Japanese puppet theater. The puppets are four feet tall with highly detailed heads, operated by several puppeteers who wear black robes and hoods so as to not distract the audience.

In Guy Moshe's uncharacteristic follow-up to Holly (his controversial film on child trafficking shot in Cambodia's brothels), a classic retribution-and-redemption tale is re-imagined in a skewed reality blended with arch characters and shadowy fantasy.

A crime boss who rules with an iron fist and nine assassins, Nicola the Woodcutter (Ron Perlman) is the most powerful man east of the Atlantic. His associates include the murderous, cold-hearted-yet-smooth-talking right-hand man, Killer #2 (Kevin McKidd), and lover Alexandra (Demi Moore), a femme fatale with a secret past. The citizens live in fear and hope for a hero who can take the gang out.

In comes the Drifter to the Headless Horseman Saloon, who tells the bartender (Woody Harrelson) that he wants two things -- a shot of whisky and to kill Nicola.

Then enters a samurai, Yoshi (Gackt Camu), who wants to avenge his father by recovering a talisman stolen from his clan by Nicola. Guided by the bartender's wisdom, the two mavericks eventually join forces to bring down Nicola's corrupt reign, chopping heads and limbs along the way.

The California-born Hartnett had developed a steady career appearing in such Hollywood films as The Faculty, Black Hawk Down, Lucky Number Slevin and Pearl Harbor. In 2002, he starred in O -- an adaptation of William Shakespeare's Othello set in an American high school -- as Hugo, the film's version of Iago.

He then starred in Brian DePalma's true-crime mystery, The Black Dahlia (based on James Ellroy's book), as a detective investigating the real-life murder of actress Elizabeth Short.

Next, he tackled two other genres -- the classic boxing drama, Resurrecting the Champ, with Samuel L. Jackson, and the graphic novel-based horror thriller, 30 Days of Night, in which he played a small-town sheriff battling vampires.

Hartnett’s turn-downs have been as notable as some of the films he made. He passed on an opportunity to play Clark Kent/Superman in the film that was going to be directed by Brett Ratner, and was going to play trumpeter Chet Baker in The Prince of Cool, but didn't agree with the producer's ideas.

In 2007, he took time out from filming to support the green lifestyle campaign of Global Cool.

But more recently he opted for Bunraku, which premiered as a selection of the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival Midnight Madness section. A theatrical and VOD release is slated for this weekend.

As Hartnett renews his cinematic presence -- he has a quartet of films up-coming, including Singularity and Stuck Between Stations -- he is again giving interviews such as this exclusive Q&A.

Q: You had a string of exciting, interesting films and then slowed down a bit. What went on between those films and this one?

JH: I've been working, just not necessarily acting. I took some time off from acting.

I started a production company, directing a little bit and writing a lot. Right before this, I did a movie, I Come with the Rain, which didn't really get a release because it was so dark.

And then I did this, and now I've got Singularity with [director] Roland Joffé that will come out soon, I believe.

Q: It's supposed to be science fiction?

JH: Well, it's set in the late 1700s in India.

Q: I thought it had a time travel theme to it.

JH: It's set in 2020 as well. There's no time travel, but it's about the possibility of reincarnation.

Q: When you do offbeat and off-kilter dark things along the lines of Bunraku, it forces you to figure out how to give life to an unusual character. What was it that you did to make your character into an archetype?

JH: A film like this requires making up an entire backstory because there is no backstory to speak of. You don't know anything about him. I came up with a world that he might have existed in and then gave him some pathos.

Q: Enlighten me about the world that lies behind him, which we don't necessarily see outlined in the film.  

JH: I thought it would be interesting because the world was kind of a circus-oriented film. If he was part of something like that, he was a drifter of some sort.

His father was killed, so obviously he didn't really know his father. His mother was gone, so he was raised by somebody else.

He's called "the Drifter." So who drifts? We came up with traveling gypsies, and that was the way that he was raised.

He didn't know any home, really, and he didn't really know who he was and he was never given a name. We spent some time figuring out who he was and decided that it almost doesn't matter what his backstory is. What's more interesting is why he's here and why it's taken him so long to get back.

My idea is that he wasn't really told about this situation, like about his father being killed, until he was old enough and he'd been living in this gypsy world for a long time.

And then he had to spend some time figuring out how he was going to take revenge. No guns, so he had to learn to fight. He's just a brawler, a natural brawler.

Q: How much did this bring out your inner brawler? Did it take a lot of work for you to put aside your pacifist elements and get the brawler out of you?

JH: There were some pretty physical things in this film to do, so I had to work pretty hard to get my body in shape for this. But I've got a little brawler in me.

Q: Were there any famous brawls in your past that you engaged in or defused that you can tell me about?

JH: I haven't been in a physical fight since I was 14. I broke up a fight in New York a few years ago, and then the people who were in it tried to sue me, saying I was in the fight. That's just some bad behavior on some idiot's part. But no, no, I don't.

Q: To bone up on Japanese culture, did you read books about its puppet theater or look at samurai films? Do you know about the wandering samurai, the ronin?

JH: There were a lot of different references for this film, one of them being something like a ronin, but having to do with [director Akira] Kurosawa usually -- and it was film references, mostly.

Kurosawa was used in creating this. There was [Sergio Leone], of course, and then Jean-Pierre Melville -- French New Wave stuff. This is such a film-centric film, I had to do a lot of watching of films to figure out what [the] references [were].

Q: Name some films that you saw as Bunraku prep that will stay with you for the rest of your life.

JH: I've watched a lot of French New Wave films, but they were mostly the Truffauts and the Louis Malles, those kind of guys. And then Guy, the director, introduced me to Jean-Pierre Melville, and he's one of my favorite directors now.

Q: Did you have any particular Kurosawa film or other samurai movies you watched to prep for this?

JH: Hidden Fortress. I've seen everything of Kurosawa's over the years; I don't know what I watched specifically for this. This is three-and-a-half years ago that we started filming this.

Q: When you were filming, did you know about the digital side of it? How much did that help or hurt you in making the film, knowing that it was going to be altered technologically?

JH: It was no different for me. I saw the landscape drawings that were sitting in the production office and I knew what he was going for as far as the feel of the world. But we were on physical sets the whole time.

So for me it was like making any other film, except there were a lot of physical requirements that I had never had to use before. It doesn't matter to me what the sky is going to look like.

Q: How was it seeing the finished product?

JH: Guy really pulled it off. The reason I was drawn to this film was because of Guy's vision. Before I even read the script, he came in and spoke to me in New York about being in it.

He didn't want me to read the script; he wanted to explain it to me visually. He wanted to have a discussion about his reference points as far as other films go for the film. And then I went and read the [script].

I was intrigued by Guy's thorough understanding of what he was trying to create, even though most people wouldn't understand it just by reading the film or by looking at the title, of course.

But he pulled off what he was going for, and that's brave and takes a lot of guts and intelligence.

Q: What did you think about the cast he selected for this movie? Were they people you had worked with, or wanted to work with?

JH: I love the guys that worked on this film. We spent a lot of time hanging out. We were in Bucharest, Romania. There wasn't a lot else to do except hang out with each other, so we got to know each other very well.

I've been a fan of a lot of their work for a long time, so it was unsurprising that they were great fun to work with on set.

Q: Did you see his previous film Holly? What did you think of it?

JH: I hadn't seen Holly when Guy came out to New York. He came out with a completely clean slate.

I knew he was a new director, but he knew exactly what he was going for. He was very conscious of the fact that it was something new for him as well. He's an incredibly intelligent guy.

I believed that he could make something unique, something interesting, something different from the cookie-cutter films that come out every week. This is obviously not right down the middle, so I was really pleased with the final product.

Q: Did Guy's Israeli background enhance your appreciation of each other and did it add to the dialogue between you two?

JH: Guy comes from a world where there's a lot of fighting, obviously, and so the theme of the film made sense to me knowing that he was Israeli. But he's a remarkably easy guy to get along with.

It doesn't matter where he's from. I trusted his judgment on this film. We had our share of talks about what I wanted to do with the character, and we came to a conclusion and I'm proud of the outcome.

I always like to work with people who have a real sense of what they're going for. If you're working with someone who's just accommodating all the time, then you never know where you stand.

Guy definitely has opinions and he definitely knows what he wants, and that's reassuring for me as an actor. So this was a good experience.