Entertainment journalists – at least bad ones – often include stories about their personal experiences in their articles. It’s really annoying because sometimes you just want to know whether a film is good or to read about a celebrity. That said, here’s what happened on my trip to New York.
§When I found out from a local publicity agency that Paramount hoped to send someone from Cadenza to a couple movie screenings in New York on the last weekend before finals last semester, I signed up immediately – with complete disregard for my exam schedule and the small fact that it wasn’t my decision who got to go.
I arrived at LaGuardia, picked up my bag, and hailed a cab. Now, I was very careful when I spoke to the cab driver. I had been told that some New York drivers would take a needlessly long route to your hotel if they thought you weren’t from the area. So I told him very clearly, “Listen, man, I’m going to the Essex House Hotel, and don’t think because I just got off an airplane you can drive the wrong way without me noticing.” It definitely worked, and the two hour ride only cost me $248.37.
After arriving, I checked and went to my way-too-nice-for-a- lowly- college-journalist hotel room. The first screening wasn’t for about five more hours, so I thought about how I could spend my time in one of the biggest cities in the world.
Naturally, I decided to watch television. And guess what was on. The Real World 10: New York! MTV was having an all-day marathon. This was great. I could watch a TV show filmed in New York, while I was there. This way, I was able to really see the city – and study for my anthropology exam – all without worrying about getting lost, getting mugged, or even wearing pants.
After a few hours, I realized that I wasn’t really taking advantage of my situation, so I got dressed, went downstairs, and bought a couple hot dogs from a real, honest-to-God New York hot dog vendor. I finally was really a part of the city. But becoming a full-fledged member of such a major metropolitan area can be pretty tiring, so I went back to my room and took a nap until I had to go to the movie theatre.
On my way back up to my room, I shared an elevator with Jack Black, one of the stars of Orange County, whom I would be interviewing later that evening. I didn’t want to come off as a freak by talking to him and saying how cool he was, so I just nodded and smiled as if to say “You’re a talented actor, but I’m sure you get hassled by a lot of fans, so I’ll just stand here quietly.” He did the same back to me, as if to say “You’re the 50th person to think he’s come up with that whole nodding thing on his own since I got to the hotel.”
After the screenings, between which I had a front row seat to an interview with Black, I gave a friend at New York University a call to see if he wanted to go out. He said he was going to run to a party next door, but that he’d call me back in five minutes.
An hour later, still waiting in my room for my friend to call, I decided to order a shrimp cocktail. In addition to paying for my room and my plane tickets, Paramount had also given me a $200 room service credit. So, as I waited for my $6 shrimp (that’s per shrimp), I realized that they had spent close to $2000 on me alone, not to mention the dozens of other college journalists there. That reminded me of how record companies used to pay radio DJs to play their albums – a process known as “payola” – until it was made known in a huge scandal in the 40s and laws were passed against it. (I saw an episode of PBS’ “Mathnet” about it when I was a kid.) I decided that since I wasn’t being paid, but I was being given free shrimp, that Paramount was doing what I like to call “shrimpola,” a word that sounded much funnier in my head than it looks on this page.
Soon thereafter, I got a call from my very inebriated friend, who was asking why I hadn’t called him back. I was a little frustrated but remembered that without stupid people, I wouldn’t seem so smart. So I forgot about it and took a cab down to NYU to visit him. We’d go to a couple New York bars, then to some clubs, and use pick-up lines on girls I’d never see again. OR sit around his dorm room for an hour. Even though he was eager to get me there, he was less eager to entertain me once I arrived. I pretty much just stood there until I remembered that my hotel account could also pay for adult films, and I decided to go back to enjoy some “pornola.”
The next day, I finished up everything, got a cab back to the airport and flew home. Oh yeah, and I interviewed Cameron Crowe, Tom Cruise, and some of the stars and filmmakers from Orange County. Read on, and enjoy.
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Cruise and Crowe on Vanilla Sky
Cadenza joined several dozen college journalists to interview two of Hollywood’s biggest names, Tom Cruise and Cameron Crowe, about Vanilla Sky. The two originally worked together in the 1996 hit Jerry Maguire and reunited to remake the 1997 Spanish thriller Abre los Ojos (Open Your Eyes) by Alejandro Amen bar.
Crowe wrote the screenplay, and both produced the film. In it, Cruise stars as David Aames, a thirty-something media mogul. After a car wreck, Aames is left disfigured, but that’s just the beginning of a complex web of events addressing love, sex, life, dreams, and the effect of pop culture on people. The film also stars Cameron Diaz, Pen‚lope Cruz, and Jason Lee.
In the interview, Cruise and Crowe made it clear how excited they were about the project, how they really preferred to be called by their first names, and how willing they were to help out young journalists who foolishly brought 30 minute cassette tapes to a 60 minute interview.
How much did the make-up affect your performance and your direction? The shots of the makeup were so grotesque they were almost disturbing.
Cruise: We did a lot of research on reconstructive surgery, and it’s astounding what they can do today. Michelle Burke, was the makeup artist, someone I’ve worked with and known since Interview with a Vampire. Cameron and I thought that we’re not going to make this picture unless the makeup works and it’s real. We did a lot of research to find the physicality and kind of emotionally what happens. It was helpful because it was claustrophobic, and I was wearing contacts, so it was difficult for me to see. We did six tests on it. Each test we rehearsed the club scene, and he would just direct me and work on that scene because it was kind of a pivotal moment for that character.
Crowe: I liked how you always played it from the inside out, as a guy who had nothing to depend on that he once really depended on That was amazing what you brought to the stuff in the mask because it was a guy who was moving his hands more and was more needy. It was riveting.
I think your films, especially the last four are defined by a moment, like in Almost Famous when Billy Crudup and Kate Hudson first meet.
Crowe: I like when she’s dancing in the open arena in all that trash. They were all saying “This will never be in the movie,” and I was like “Oh, yes. This is why we’re here.”
Based on that, what do you think defines Vanilla Sky?
Crowe: There was one moment that we sort of found as we were shooting. I went to visit a friend of mine and saw that he had papers spread all throughout his house, and he was trying to read while standing up. I thought how great would it be for David Aames, when he’s an indoor-bound guy, that he would have all these memos spread out, and he would just be walking, gaining strength as he’s looking at these words.
The movie’s soundtrack includes Radiohead, REM, Jeff Buckley – a lot of interesting musical choices. What do those bands mean to you?
Crowe: We played a lot of that music while we were making it, and that’s when the movie starts to get a feel through the music, and that starts in the writing. Those bands, in particular Radiohead – we listened to Kid A constantly, especially in New York – so I still think of their music as I’m walking the streets. And then the band Sigur Ros, from Iceland. Sigur Ros had only given their music to a small movie in Iceland. They let us use their music in this, and that really influenced the movie. We couldn’t find the right piece of music to end the movie with, and I went to see Sigur Ros in L.A., and they played “The Nothing Song” second. And I was like “Where’s that song? They don’t have that song on their album. We’ve got to get it.” We actually used a bootleg for the movie.
Tom, while you were wearing the mask, did you find it hard to emote because your facial expressions weren’t showing?
Cruise: I took it off Cameron. He wrote the scenes and directed them, so I just played the scenes. I used fine behavior with that character – just different head turns – and Cameron would just watch me. While we’re on the set, he works in such a way that it’s a workshop, and we’re all very relaxed but focused on the scene. I’d often just work, and we’d talk or he’d watch me, and we’d just start rolling. You’d never think of it, but I was concerned vocally because how can you mic the mask? We tried inside the mask and booming the mask. It was tricky but fun.
What about Cruise as an actor made you want him for this role?
Crowe: Well, we were looking for something that we could do together, and we both loved Open Your Eyes. It’s a great jumping-off point for asking the questions in a different way. I am just not a fan of movies where something happens physically, and the whole movie is about the affliction. Sometimes they’re good, but it’s hard to get past the affliction and into the story. In this one, it just felt like part of the character, and he played it that way. It’s a guy whose journey includes the effects of an accident, but as you know people in real life who have been through something like that, they work very hard to show you who they are inside, and sometimes it only happens when they’re forced to show you what’s inside – and that’s how we played it. And if you see the movie again, you start to go right past whatever physical affliction is present and you see what’s going on in the person, and that’s a great thing I think. That’s why I made the movie.
What brought you to remake Open Your Eyes, and what did you add or make your own for Vanilla Sky?
Cruise: Well, we were big fans of it. Before we went into it, I spent a lot of time to make sure that Alejandro (the films director) was O.K. with that, and I was producing his next picture, The Others. It’s a story that asks a lot of interesting questions, and it’s a story that was open-ended. I love Cameron’s approach to it. He said “Come on, I’m going to get my band together, and we’re going to cover this song.” It’s a story that allows an artist, such as Cameron, to come in and ask his own questions and come to his own conclusions. The way that Cameron designed the picture was to have a dialogue between the two films, and I’ve never seen that before. This was a universal story that was still open-ended, that still felt like there was another chapter to be told. And when Alejandro saw it, he was amazed, and the first thing he said to Cameron was “We’re two brothers, asking the same questions, but we have different answers.” And I think that Open Your Eyes is very much a Alejandro Amen bar picture, and this very much a Cameron Crowe picture, and his voice is in that. When you look historically at films that are done this way, they are never approached in this manner. They’re usually a remake, as opposed to a cover. I was fascinated to see what that was going to be like.
After seeing Kate Hudson in Almost Famous and Penelope Cruz in Vanilla Sky, I was wondering how you got your lead females to play such unique and realistic characters at the same time.
Crowe: I remember after Fast Times at Ridgemont High, I felt strongest writing guy characters. And I was just getting together with my wife, and she has a big family of women, and I have a lot of women in my family, but I hadn’t studied them as much as I did after I met Nancy [his wife]. And I started to study how great women characters had been written in the 30s and 40s and I found that it came down to letting every character, not just the women characters, have their private moments, where you could just be with them and see how they react to the world and see their private joy, their pain and everything. Kate and Penelope had this great ability to just make you feel like you were watching them live a whole life and say a whole speech, but really they were saying nothing and you were just watching their face. That’s the coolest thing of all. A lot of women, and men, don’t get characters that allow them to say things silently. It’s so much fun to just play music and let actors have a chance like that because they give you gifts like you wouldn’t believe.
Cruise: It’s great for an actor to have those kind of characters live in that kind of framework – to be part of a story that has twists and turns and yet it has a love story driving all the way through it. I think one of the things that I loved about the screenplay and Cameron’s storytelling is that here we are in our lives, but a lot of times that we do things in our life without realizing the effects not only on ourselves, but the ripple-effect on the people around us. I remember being in my 20s and not recognizing the responsibility and what can happen, and I love that message in the picture. And those moments of “what is casual sex?” Is there that promise, that carrot? Yes, you can physically walk away from having a sexual experience from someone, but emotionally, what happened is there. There is a responsibility in that.
Cameron, music has been an important role in your films and your career, and you choose to incorporate rock-and-roll into this one. I was wondering if you had any thought on rock-and-roll as a universal language.
Crowe: It’s funny about music, not just rock, but music is usually so much more eloquent. Music is often the better movie than most movies because it plays in your head. I’ve seen the greatest movies driving, and it’s so dangerous because you just go to that place, and that’s what great music does. So, the challenge is always to come up with the right images to go with music that I love, and you can’t always do it. But music and film have such a great marriage when it works, so we usually have a lot of fun in the editing room, and Tom would come and visit. And we’d just try different music, and when it works, whew, you just kind of have to step away and go “whoa”. now can we just get the music. And then begins the process of asking for it.
Cruise: Luckily, they throw music at Cameron. I mean, Radiohead, the music that we have – people saw the picture and bent over backwards to make sure that he could get the music that he wants. And also hanging out with Cameron’s great because you get bootleg of all the great performances, anything you can imagine.
Crowe: I still can’t believe Paul McCartney did the title song for this movie. The guy was so amazing.
Cruise: I’d get the phone calls. “Guess who’s coming to the office.”
Crowe: And then Paul McCartney would ask about you.
Cruise: That is a trip man. I was like “What?”
You also said that the movie deals with the effect of pop culture, and I was wondering what you felt the movie specifically said about that subject matter. And with David, who is the editor of a magazine very similar to Maxim, which is highly successful but not exactly very nourishing. Do you think the movie tends to criticize pop culture?
Cruise: This is a pop culture ride. You look at the music that was chosen and the characters, you look at the fact that we could film in Times Square. The iconography of the film is pop culture. I don’t think that it criticizes – it’s just a look in on it. We go through our life, and sometimes we see movies and think “That’s love to me. I want to have that moment with a woman” or “that’s what a father is.”
Cruise: Cover me.
Cruise: But what we think a parent should be like. I think it’s jut a comment on it. I think in our own lives, you can’t disassociate yourself from it. It just is, in terms of the clothes you wear or the choices you make. I think Cameron knows pop culture, Rolling Stone magazine, music. He knows it, and has looked at it from the inside out his whole life.
Crowe: I think this one is. Cruise: Ok, go man, go man. Crowe: One of the cool things is that probably more than Tom knows, he represents pop culture too, just in the way that people have dealt with and related to his work. I wanted to get into the idea of pop culture and all of its hideous wonderfulness because it still defines every day of my life in some way or another, either by battling against the effects or going with them. And it’s just great that the movie is also. Crowe: (laughing) Ok, man, no C-120’s here. [referring to how everyone only brought 60 minute tapes] Cruise: Ok, go, buddy, go, buddy. Crowe: Pop culture is sort of commented on in the movie both as we made it and after we made it too. It’s a wild beast trying to make a timely movie about pop culture. Obviously, even answering a question on pop culture, we have the technical side of pop culture commenting to us. Cruise: I think we’re good. We’re in. The past few years have been good to Jack Black. He broke onto the big screen in High Fidelity, playing a memorable music store clerk in High Fidelity. Since then, Black got his first starring role in the recent release Shallow Hal opposite Gwyneth Paltrow, and his band Tenacious D has continued to prosper Black: I haven’t prepared anything. I’m told you just saw the film. Thank you for staying. (He’s handed a microphone.) Check. Check. Chiggity check. This one doesn’t have as good of an amplification. Check. Chiggity chiggity check. Chiggity chiggity check. Mr. Black? Are you going to do a movie with. Black: I wasn’t done with my sound check. Check chiggity. Check chiggity one, two, three. Good. When will what happen? A movie with your band Tenacious D? Black: A movie with the band. We’ve scheduled it now for August 22, 2005. And man it will be a barn-burner. Citizen D. Apocalypse D. I’m not sure. We’re working on it. There will be no D-whine, until it’s D-time. In Bob Roberts, one of your first films. You were fanatical and made an impression. Are you going to get into something more serious or dramatic? Black: No real solid plans. A friend of mine is writing a script. She wants me to play Dylan Thomas, the poet. See, already there’s laughter. That’s what I’m afraid of – that people will start laughing. You haven’t even seen my Dylan Thomas impersonation. And I’m not going to show it to you cause it’s not ready. I’ll give you a little taste. “Do not go, gentle.” (in a high-pitched voice that causes more laughter). No. No. I don’t have the voice yet, but it will be rad. Can you tell us a little about the song “Tribute”? Black: Well, it’s the first song we wrote. We wanted to write the greatest song ever written and call it “The Greatest Song in the World.” And we worked on it for two days, and we realized that we were not going to be able to write the greatest song. So, instead we wrote the tribute to the greatest song, and it’s about how we did write the greatest song, but we forgot it and didn’t tape record it, so this is a song about that song. Your films have shown your range of acting ability. Do you think the Academy will step up and recognize? Black: There’s never any love for the comedian. (pausing) So, no. You have to squeeze out some tears. or be disabled in some way. If you can pull that off, then you get the prizes. Many singers don’t really make good actors and vice versa, how do you attribute your dual success? Black: Well, most actor-singers are doing it as like a vanity project, and it’s all just straight-up singing, trying to be a regular, legit band. And our band, they’re more theatrical elements, and we use some acting chops to make up for a lack of musical talent. You had such a quick rise in popularity. How do you plan to avoid Pauly Shore-syndrome? Black: Yeah, I don’t know. I probably won’t avoid it. (pausing) What is the rate? You know, you get three movies. I’m just trying my hardest. We’ll see what happens. (pausing) Pauly Shore. He haunts me. You’re wearing your underwear through this whole film. Black: Not true. Not true. I’m in the undies when I’m at home because that’s what my character’s comfortable with. It just seemed right. When he’s at home, why would he wear anything more? Well, when he’s watching the fire as well. Black: Oh yeah. That was poised. Poised? Post-coital. Poist-coital. What was it like spending 12 hours a day in your underwear? Black: Well, it was only when the cameras rolled, and then an immediate robe was thrown my way. But, I didn’t mind. It’s a little chilly. Did you wear the same pair for the entire movie? Black: There were two pairs and a stunt pair. But yeah, I always wore the same ones. They cleaned them. They cleaned them every day. Don’t worry about that. What are some upcoming projects that you have? Black: I’m just looking forward to a break. I don’t have anything on the horizon right now. I’ve been reading a bunch of scripts that I’m not really into. And, I don’t know, I’m doing to go out to the desert and recharge because I’m kind of burnt creatively. I want to take a break and come back like the Phoenix from the ashes. Are people now calling you that once wouldn’t return your calls? Is is true you’re being offered a TV series? Black: Um, I can’t think of anybody calling me. There are more people that laugh at jokes I say that aren’t funny. There’s a lot more fake laughing around me. Maybe I’ll do a show. I don’t have any plans, but I won’t rule it out. I want to do good stuff. I don’t care if it’s TV or whatever. In regards to Tenacious D, is there a difference between Tenacious D groupies and Jack Black, the actor, groupies? Is there a cross-over? Black: Tenacious D groupies scream more. There’s more screaming worship. Hailing the power and the glory of the D. The Jack Black fans are like “Heeyyy, yeah.” It’s a mellower thing. That’s the difference between rock and acting. Rock is more like worship, and acting is more like, I don’t know, something else. You just mentioned the need for a vacation. It looked like you did a lot of lounging in this movie. To prepare for the roles, did you nap? Black: No. That’s fake lounging there. It’s actually very high tension lounging. When the cameras roll, there’s just this incredible tension, even if you’re just sleeping. You need a deep tissue massage right afterwards. Wait a second, I just thought of something. I remembered what it was. The other thing that happens now? People don’t return my calls more, but I get calls from people I used to know, like 10 years ago, really angry at me if I don’t call them back cause “You’ve gone Hollywood now!” And it’s like, “I wouldn’t have called you back before I went Hollywood.” Now, it’s like attached to some terrible Hollywood thing. It’s not the case. A lot of danger I deal with now for not hooking them up. “Nobody hooked me up, buddy, you can fucking leave me alone.” Sons of bitches.
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Jack Black, Wonder Boy
In his latest film Orange County, Black plays a twenty-something slacker who spends all his waking hours drinking, doing drugs, and walking around in his tighty whiteys – often at the same time.
Our interview with him is informal to say the least. Immediately following an advance screening of the movie, Black comes to the front of the theatre, having abandoned his dirty underwear for an over-sized winter jacket that makes him look more like a hermit living in northern Canada than a rising stars.
For half an hour, Black fielded questions from a movie theatre filled with dozens of journalists from the college press and professional media. Black spoke slowly and carefully, pausing a few seconds between each sentence. While he almost seemed high, he definitely entertained everyone in the room.