Post by BIGFANBOY on Sept 18, 2009 4:38:00 GMT -5
PAUL SCHNEIDER is a BRIGHT STAR
By Gary Dean Murray
By Gary Dean Murray
Paul Schneider is a actor on the move. While most people know him from the hit NBC TV show Parks & Recreation, he has been in some very different film roles. Last seen in the highly praised independent flick Away We Go, this young man has appeared in Lars and the Real Girl, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and The Family Stone. The critics praised his work in Cameron Crowe's Elizabethtown, and in 2002 he was awarded the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival for his co-writing and starring turn in the acclaimed All The Real Girls. This turn also got him a Gotham Award Nomination for the performance.
Now he's on the promotional tour for Bright Star, the latest film by Jane Campion, who is the creative force behind the cinematic achievement The Piano. Bright Star is the story of poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and his relationship with Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish). It is a tragic story of doomed love. Schneider plays Brown, the best friend and guiding force behind the lyrical genius. Seeing the raw talent in Keats, Brown tries to push away any distraction, which includes the lovely young Fanny. It is the kind of art house film role that all actors covet.
As we sat down to talk, it became apparent how quick Paul Schneider's mind works. He goes off on simple questions with long answers, examining verbally the different aspects of what is asked. This scatter-shot approach gives one pause while trying to glean the nut from the shell, the take the salient point from the tangent.
On landing the role of Mr. Brown, Paul was very circular yet matter-of-fact in his answer. He said, “I had to go get this job like I had to get video store jobs. I got a call from my agent that Jane Campion had gotten in touch with her. I had always been a Jane Campion fan. The Piano was the movie I saw that sent me to film school. If it weren't for The Piano I wouldn't have gone to film school. I didn't have a great love for movies before that. I wasn't one of those kids who knew what they were gonna do when they grew up. I never wanted to be an actor, it never had occurred to me. The Piano sort of peeled my eyes back as a marriage of commerce and art. We spoke on the phone and I liked her a lot. But it was a surreal moment. It would be like (Led Zeppelin drummer) John Bonham calling you up and saying 'I heard you play the drums' and I go 'Not very good, sir. I try really hard but you're way better than me.' After I read the script I was relieved because I started getting ideas about the character. The situation was surreal enough that I thought I'd tell her my ideas to see how far this thing would go.”
Though much is known about John Keats, there is scant information about his friend and benefactor Brown. “There is not a ton of stuff about him. As it always happens, I get these grand ideas at the beginning of the movie. I'll go on Amazon and get a bunch of used books. The books come and they're really long. I read about 5% of the reading material because I wanted to get the accent correct. The fear of being thought of being an idiot not getting this accent, thus screwing up Jane Campion's first film in years. Fear is a great motivating factor.”
Paul sees Fanny as the thing that comes between Keats and Brown, threatening their friendship. Brown's relationship with Keats defined him as a person. “Without Keats he is lost in a world without identity.” Before filming the Paul and Ben took a trip to the Northern Country Lake District to Wordsworth's house. As much as a bonding experience, it was a research trip. People thought that Paul was Ben's assistant.
This role is a giant departure from his previous work. “I thought that I needed to step it up a bit,” he said of the role, “And not do something I had already done”. Paul said that to get the accent right he worked with two different dialect coaches, both in LA and the UK. “I've done Southern accents but never a British,” he stated. It was like his Spanish II class in high school but with more writing. Having Jane Campion believing in him was a help. “People respond to you putting confidence in them,” he said. “There was a part of her just thinking that I could do this. That feeling that I got from her. Hopefully it worked in Jane's favor.”
Since Paul Schneider is an awarded film maker, doing both short works and features, it was asked if he learned anything from the Oscar winning director. He said, “She surrounds herself with the right people. Janet Patterson is the costume and production designer. She's worked with Jane for years. She's brilliant, extremely intelligent, and an extremely precise fantastic woman. She's been nominated for Oscars a few times and she knows what she's doing. Her longtime producer Jan Chapman is a name (I noted) when I first saw The Piano. These women have been working with Jane for twenty plus years.'
“But the reason Jane is so ballsy is she also hired a 32 year-old director of photography Greg Fraser who is a genius but didn't have the resume. She put her faith in him because she just trusted his visuals. Mark Bradshaw, the composer, got the job when he was 25. For her to come back and take risks like that was amazing.”
Referring to his fellow cast mates as fantastic, Paul knows that Jane could have cast anyone in Hollywood in the roles. “She could have hedged her bet (by using name actors),” said Paul. “She's so ballsy putting faith in people like us. And it worked. I don't see people being ballsy these days.”
Like many in the entertainment industry, Paul notes the turn Hollywood has made over the years. “The market place has a lot of sharp elbows now. There are loads of people pouring loads of money into one or two movies per year that have a built in audience because it is based on a franchise in another market. I feel like the heyday of the freewheeling independent film is over because everyone is afraid of the financial climate. It makes for this homogenized movie world.”
How Paul views Bright Star is very different from the typical Screenland mindset. “This movie is like a great art show that passes through town. It ain't gonna come around again,” he said. “The world we're living in now is not taking many chances. Here's this amazing relevant movie about first love. I've never seen a movie that more intimately illustrated how insane it feels to fall in love.”
He summed up his thought by saying, “The fact that it's a period piece eventually melted away and it was like 'What's gonna happen to these two kids?' And getting there is interesting.” Then he added, “There is such an emphasis on how we know things and not how we feel things.” He feels that Bright Star brings such a message.
Check out more about BRIGHT STAR here - www.brightstarthemovie.com
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