October 18, 2009|When you're a stage actor who's suddenly found himself the lead in the new Coen Brothers picture and playing Arnold Rothstein on "Boardwalk Empire", Martin Scorsese's upcoming HBO series, you're more or less obliged to accept the mantle of Rising Star. There's no doubting this guy is going places. Yet A Serious Man's Michael Stuhlbarg is exceedingly modest in describing his craft, dismissing his own contributions with a day-job casualness that seems to leave the fancy artistic crap for his directors to figure out. All things considered, his superficial distance from in-depth discussion might be a consequence of the endless variations on "What's it like to work with the Coens?" or "What's it like working with Scorsese?" he'd undoubtedly been asked dozens of times before we met at Boston's Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Either that, or he's reluctant to put too fine a point on a profession (and a film) noted for its slippery nature.

June 7, 2009|Meeting him at the Ritz-Carlton in Boston to discuss The Hangover, it was almost immediately apparent that Ed Helms is right in the middle of a difficult transitional period between television and film: "The Daily Show" is long behind him, "The Office" is opening up countless new avenues, and Judd Apatow is referring to him as a national treasure. The Hangover isn't exactly the kind of film you can discuss at great length–you either pass the jokes amongst your comrades or simply dismiss its juvenilia out-of-hand–but it features enough depth in its performances to jumpstart a conversation about this actor, his talents, and the circumstances that brought him here. Zach Galifianakis may be the one you end up quoting after the end credits roll, but as Stu Price, a worrywart dentist who wakes up from a drug-fuelled night in Vegas to find that he's missing a tooth, Helms is the most nuanced member of the cast, capturing the essence of The Hangover's most delirious highs while keeping himself–and the movie–grounded in a bewildered reality. Helms admits that he's not entirely comfortable with the subject of himself, but he's a good sport about it nonetheless, keeping you at a somewhat businesslike distance from his early career but still game to reflect on where he's been and where he's going.

April 5, 2009|It shouldn't come as a surprise, really, given that the film in question deftly balances crowd-pleasing satire with incisive critical commentary, but R.W. ("Bob") Goodwin walks a fine line when discussing Alien Trespass, his paean to cinematic science-fiction of the 1950s. At his most jovial, he pushes forward with the wild abandon of a salesman who knows that he's clinched a deal; at his most thoughtful, he seems to delicately pluck the strings of personal experience, careful not to sabotage what's on the table by revealing too much. Throughout our dialogue at the Four Seasons Hotel in Boston, we never stray far from the ins and outs of Alien Trespass (a very brief detour into his career as producer and director for "The X-Files" is mostly limited to the preparation offered by "feature-quality work done on a television schedule"), though I suspect that's only because we both have a lot of conflicting notions about the various modes of filmmaking on display here and we're eager to get them off our chests. What, exactly, is the worth of an infallibly earnest pastiche of the atomic era at this stage of the game? Goodwin beams with pride over positive reactions to Alien Trespass, feeling particularly validated by the idea that this, his first film, is more of a communal experience than an intellectual one. If Goodwin's perhaps a bit of a deliberate obfuscator at times, he definitely knows the score.