Head of features
Park Pictures
1) While you are waiting to make your feature, keep making short films (or TV commercials), honing your craft. For a first time filmmaker it’s very important to have a calling card. It’s also very important to have a good team, but don’t expect your agent, managers or producers to make everything happen once they are on board. You have to keep pushing. It can take years for that first important actor attachment to come on board a film. Don’t give up. And keep developing new projects because many times, it’s the script that someone comes up with out of frustration that becomes the project that comes together quickly.
2) Never stop reading, whether it’s novels, essays, screenplays, plays. Find talented directors and writers and help them any way you can. Be honest and up front with everyone. In indie film trust is the most important thing. You will get a lot further with both your director/writers and your partners/investors if you are transparent. Don’t be afraid of co-productions, they are a great way to get films made, and a great way to work with amazing producers who can teach you a lot.
3) Because director Brett Haley also edits his own films, on THE HERO, to help with our limited budget, I decided to convert my personal office into Brett’s edit suite, and he cut the entire film there using ADOBE PREMIERE. All it took was a couple of nice monitors and some speakers and Brett and his assistant had a great work space. The film came out beautifully, premiered at this year’s Sundance and will be released on June 9 by the ORCHARD. And now just as I was about to move back into my office, we are producing a new documentary which will also be cut in my office! So the bad news is, it appears that I no longer have an office. But we do have an edit suite.
4) It’s hard to choose just one project to talk about, but OTHER PEOPLE is a film I’m very proud to have been a part of. The way everyone came together to help Chris Kelly tell such an emotional and personal story was inspiring, and the whole cast and crew, on a very low budget, stood behind Chris every step of the way. Molly Shannon’s performance gave us all the chance to know what an amazing woman Chris’s mom was, and getting to see Chris’s eyes fill with tears the moment Molly won the Independent Spirit Award was priceless.
Rom-Com Mainstay Hugh Grant Shifts To The Dark Side and He’s Never Been Happier
After some difficulties connecting to a Zoom, Hugh Grant eventually opts to just phone instead.
"Sorry about that," he apologizes. "Tech hell." Grant is no lover of technology. Smart phones, for example, he calls the "devil's tinderbox."
"I think they're killing us. I hate them," he says. "I go on long holidays from them, three or four days at at time. Marvelous."
Hell, and our proximity to it, is a not unrelated topic to Grant's new film, "Heretic." In it, two young Mormon missionaries (Chloe East, Sophie Thatcher) come knocking on a door they'll soon regret visiting. They're welcomed in by Mr. Reed (Grant), an initially charming man who tests their faith in theological debate, and then, in much worse things.
After decades in romantic comedies, Grant has spent the last few years playing narcissists, weirdos and murders, often to the greatest acclaim of his career. But in "Heretic," a horror thriller from A24, Grant's turn to the dark side reaches a new extreme. The actor who once charmingly stammered in "Four Weddings and a Funeral" and who danced to the Pointer Sisters in "Love Actually" is now doing heinous things to young people in a basement.
"It was a challenge," Grant says. "I think human beings need challenges. It makes your beer taste better in the evening if you've climbed a mountain. He was just so wonderfully (expletive)-up."
"Heretic," which opens in theaters Friday, is directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, co-writers of "A Quiet Place." In Grant's hands, Mr. Reed is a divinely good baddie — a scholarly creep whose wry monologues pull from a wide range of references, including, fittingly, Radiohead's "Creep."
In an interview, Grant spoke about these and other facets of his character, his journey... Read More