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Tag: Joel Edgerton

  • Joel Edgerton on the Deeply Personal Ties of ‘Train Dreams’

    When we went to Sundance, you could feel the silences, and you could feel people starting to sort of breathe in step with the scenes. And then knowing that Netflix was so into the film and so willing to support it and had a vision for how to do that, to push it out into the world, felt like we were like a garage band that was suddenly plugged into a really big amplifier.

    Is that what it feels when, when you have an independent film purchased by something as large as Netflix?

    I think a lot of filmmakers, storytellers, are in the gambling business, because anyone who asks me, “should I invest in film?” I’m like, “If you want to make money, then go invest in real estate.” But if you want to invest in the creative process, come what may, then yeah, get involved in investing in movies.

    There’s this sort of excitement and nervousness, particularly for the filmmakers. When it gets picked up, I think it’s important to remind yourself that a small story and an independent story can be as big as the biggest movie you’ve seen, because story and character, I think, are the most important things. Spectacle movies, I believe, only really work because of the human relationships within them. Human relationships and character are the great equalizers. So a $4 million movie can make as much noise as a $150 million movie. And I think Train Dreams is a good example of that.

    As a writer-director, what did you learn from watching some of your previous directors, like Baz Luhrmann and Kathryn Bigelow?

    I feel like I go around with a basket and I’m like, “oh, that’s, that’s a good thing to remember.” Kathryn Bigelow, I remember asking her one time because she seemed so calm on set—and that was on Zero Dark Thirty, and that was a set I imagine you could also not be calm on. She said, “I hire the best people, and I get out of their way.” And Baz is a master. He teaches you just by osmosis to dream big, and to not let your ceiling be too low.

    Have you ever had a director you didn’t gel with?

    I think it’s a shame if you ever end up on a film and realize you are left to your own devices. And even further than that, I would say I think it’s a shame when an actor thinks they can go and sail their own ship, and leave the director behind as if the director has nothing to provide them.

    It’s a very important relationship. The director should be captain, and everybody else should be doing whatever they need to do to help the captain arrive at their destination. I have seen a director implode—it’s a difficult job, and the best directors become a sponge and absorb things and sort of really grow within the experience. I’ve seen that happen once, where somebody didn’t grow—they diminished within the experience, and it hobbled them. And I saw that person about two years later and I said, “are you ever gonna direct another movie?” And they said, “you know, I realized, Joel, that being a director, you get asked a lot of questions, and you need to have the answer to all of those questions.” He said, “next time, if there ever is a next time, I’m gonna have answers to those questions—even if they’re the wrong ones, just so that I seem to have the answers to those questions.” I was like, “oh no!”

    Rebecca Ford

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  • ‘The Plague’ Director Charlie Polinger Raided His Childhood Closet to Make His “Visceral” Coming-of-Age Movie

    “Coming-of-age movies often have a nostalgic feel,” says director Charlie Polinger. “And I felt that it was actually a very horrific, intense, visceral time.”

    Polinger drew on this feeling for his feature directorial debut, The Plague, which arrives in theaters Dec. 24. The film, which bowed at the Cannes Film Festival and is up for best feature at this year’s Independent Spirits Awards, takes place at a water polo summer camp for 12-year-old boys, where one camper has been ostracized for having “the plague,” a nasty-looking case of eczema. Another of the boys, Ben (Everett Blunck), struggles between his desire to help the outcast camper and his worries about incurring the wrath of the larger group, especially the ringleader Jake (Kayo Martin).

    The director, a graduate of the AFI conservatory, spent two summers growing up gritting his teeth at an all-boys sleepaway sports camp. He says, “It took me through the second summer to get the confidence to tell my parents that maybe I wanted to mix it up.” He spent the following summers at a theater camp in Maine, mounting productions like West Side Story.

    He came up with the idea for The Plague after moving back into his childhood home during the pandemic, where he found himself quarantined in his childhood bedroom with COVID. He says, “When the fever broke, my mom was like, ‘Now can you clean out the room?’ Which she had been asking me to do for years.”

    As Polinger started sifting through clothes and others refuse of his past, he found journals, photos and yearbooks from his adolescence. “All these memories came flooding back kind of all at once, things I hadn’t thought about in over a decade. And I just started writing it all,” he says. He remembered jokes, name-calling and games, not unlike the one in his movie, that could turn casually cruel.

    “It’s such an unhinged age,” says the director. “I don’t think this is specific to boys. When you’re becoming aware of your own consciousness, and you’re exiting childhood with hormones coming in, there’s this desire to push boundaries and wreak chaos.”

    He started making calls to friends, gathering other people’s experiences of being a tween boy at summer camp and beyond. He began clocking the immense overlap (clothes, catchphrases, games, etc.) and the occasional outlier, like a memory of a camper who spent every night with a Betty Boop cardboard cut-out in his bunkbed.

    And the time spent cleaning out his childhood bedroom proved worthwhile in other ways. Polinger’s clothes, from T-shirts to Adidas slides, are used as costumes in the movie, which is set in 2003. Ahead of filming in Romania, he asked his Millennial heads of department to raid their own childhood bedrooms for artifacts like CDs, walkmen and early generation Nintendo Game Boys. Other crewmembers filled suitcases with Costco-sized cases of Capri Sun juices, bags of Doritos, and other staples of the 12-year-old boy’s diet circa the early aughts. (Capri Suns proved difficult to source on the ground in Romania.)  

    The goal was to hint at a time period but not be consumed by it, a similar approach to films like Greta Gerwig’s early 2000s-set Lady Bird. He says, “We wanted to have the exact right level of period. It still felt kind of like this timeless, slightly surreal place.”

    Initially, filmmakers didn’t plan for production to happen in Romania, but their search for the perfect pool brought them to southeastern Europe. They had an email thread going called “Best Pools in the World,” and landed on an indoor pool that would be vacant all summer because the usual tenants — the Romanian national water polo team — were busy competing in the summer Olympics.

    For the most part, Polinger approached directing his cast of 12 and 13-year-olds the way he directs adults. (The Plague’s sole onscreen adult is a well-meaning coach played by Joel Edgerton.) He placed an extra emphasis on creating a clear boundary between what happens in scenes and everyone hanging out in the downtime outside of filming.

    To carefully pull off one of the film’s more distressing sequences, when “plague”-afflicted camper Eli (Kenny Rasmussen) gets an erection in front of the entire camp, everyone, including the crew, took turns being the person getting laughed at, a suggestion of the intimacy coordinator.

    “It gave Kenny, who played Eli, the confidence to be really vulnerable,” says Polinger. “It also gave the other boys confidence to be really mean in the scene, because they knew that they weren’t going to actually be hurting his feelings.”

    This scene, like many in The Plague, could easily be played for laughs in a different movie. Polinger explains, “When you’re 12, everything can be a joke, or everything can be not a joke really quickly. We’re trying to capture that feeling in the film, too, where it is funny, but then it’s not, and it’s really stressful.”

    It’s this seemingly ubiquitous feeling that has been connecting with audiences. The film became one of the big discoveries at Cannes, with the THR review reading, “In the age of renewed questions about and considerations of the manosphere, The Plague is a prescient title.”

    Just like Polinger in his childhood bedroom, The Plague has watchers remembering their own childhoods, with equal parts delight and horror. “People come up to me of all ages and start telling me stories from when they were 12,” says the director. “And maybe overshare a little bit.”

    Mia Galuppo

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  • What to Stream: ‘Wicked: For Good’ soundtrack, Ted Danson, ‘The Bad Guys 2’ and Black cowboys

    Ted Danson’s “A Man on the Inside” returning to Netflix for its second season and Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo belting out the “Wicked: For Good” soundtrack are some of the new television, films, music and games headed to a device near you.

    Also among the streaming offerings worth your time this week, as selected by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists: Aerosmith teaming up with Yungblud on a new EP, “The Bad Guys 2” hitting Peacock and Jordan Peele looking at Black cowboys in a new documentary series.

    New movies to stream from Nov. 17-23

    — “Train Dreams,” (Friday, Nov. 21 on Netflix), Clint Bentley’s adaptation of Denis Johnson’s acclaimed novella, stars Joel Edgerton as Robert Grainier, a railroad worker and logger in the early 20th century Pacific Northwest. The film, scripted by Bentley and Greg Kwedar (the duo behind last year’s “Sing Sing” ), conjures a frontier past to tell a story about an anonymous laborer and the currents of change around him.

    — The DreamWorks Animation sequel “The Bad Guys 2” (Friday, Nov. 21 on Peacock) returns the reformed criminal gang of animals for a new heist caper. In the film, with a returning voice cast including Sam Rockwell, Awkwafina, Craig Robinson, Anthony Ramos and Marc Maron, the Bad Guys encounter a new robbery team: the Bad Girls. In his review, AP’s Mark Kennedy lamented an over-amped sequel with a plot that reaches into space: “It’s hard to watch a franchise drift so expensively and pointlessly in Earth’s orbit.”

    — In “The Roses,” Jay Roach (“Meet the Parents’), from a script by Tony McNamara (“Poor Things”), remakes Danny DeVito’s 1989 black comedy, “The War of the Roses.” In this version, Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch star as a loving couple who turn bitter enemies. In his review, Kennedy called “The Roses” “an escalating hatefest that, by the time a loaded gun comes out, all the fun has been sucked out.”

    — AP Film Writer Jake Coyle

    New music to stream on Nov. 21

    — Musical theater fans, your time has come… again. “Wicked: For Good” is upon us, and with it comes the release of its official soundtrack. On Friday, after or before you catch the film in theaters, stream its life-affirming compositions to your heart’s content. Might we suggest Ariana Grande’s “The Girl in the Bubble?” Or Cynthia Erivo’s “No Place Like Home?” And for the Jeff Goldblum and Jonathan Bailey lovers, yes, there’s gold to be unearthed, too.

    — Rock this way: Aerosmith is back with new music. Following their 2023 “Greatest Hits” collection and just a few months after the conclusion of their “Peace Out: The Farewell Tour” (the band said it would no longer hit the road due to singer Steven Tyler’s voice becoming permanently damaged by a vocal cord injury ) they’re teaming up with next gen rock ‘n’ roller Yungblud. It’s a collaborative EP called “One More Time,” out Friday. The anthemic opening track, “My Only Angel” sets the tone. What’s another one for the road?

    — AP Music Writer Maria Sherman

    New series to stream from Nov. 17-23

    — Raise your hand if you still miss “Succession” Sundays on HBO. An acclaimed Swedish drama called “Vanguard” debuts Tuesday on Viaplay that’s of the same vein. It’s a dramatization about Jan Stenbeck, one of Europe’s most influential media moguls. There’s ambition, betrayal and yes, sibling rivalry.

    — Ted Danson’s “A Man on the Inside” returns to Netflix for its second season on Thursday. Danson plays a widower named Charles who has found a new sense of purpose as an amateur private detective. In Season One, Charles moved into a retirement home to catch his culprit. In Season Two, he goes back to college to solve a case. Danson’s real-life wife, Mary Steenburgen, joins the cast as Charles’ love interest as he explores the idea of a second chance at romance.

    — Keeley Hawes and Freddie Highmore co-star in “The Assassin” for AMC+. Hawes (“Bodyguard”) plays a retired assassin living in solitude on a Greek island whose peaceful life is turned upside down when her estranged son (Highmoore) comes to visit. When the two find themselves in danger they must work together to stay alive. It premieres Thursday.

    — Jordan Peele has a new documentary series called “High Horse: The Black Cowboy” coming to Peacock on Thursday. The three-part series examines how stories of Black cowboys have been erased from both pop culture and history books.

    New video games to play from Nov. 17-23

    — If you bought Mario Kart World when Nintendo launched the Switch 2 back in June, you may be wondering: Do I really need another racing game? Kirby Air Riders comes from designer Masahiro Sakurai, the mastermind behind Super Smash Bros., so it adds that franchise’s chaotic combat to the mix. Each of the competitors has different weapons and each of the vehicles has different benefits and drawbacks. And everyone can use Kirby’s signature “inhale” technique, which lets you absorb an opponent’s skills by, well, swallowing them. So if you like your racing weird, get your motor running Thursday.

    — Lou Kesten

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  • Deauville Festival 2025 Winners: Joel Edgerton Thriller ‘The Plague,’ Plan B-Produced ‘Olmo’ and Kristen Stewart’s ‘Chronology of Water’ Take Top Awards

    Charlie Polinger’s debut “The Plague,” a psychological thriller starring Joel Edgerton, won the Grand Prize at the 51st edition of the Deauville American Film Festival, which wraps this evening in the French Normandie town.

    The movie opened at Cannes, in Un Certain Regard, where it earned solid reviews. It tells the story of a shy teenager dealing with vicious bullying while attending an all-boys water polo camp. It was acquired by the Independent Film Company for North American distribution, while AGC Studios handles international sales. Edgerton, who was at Deauville this week to present his Netflix movie “Train Dreams” and receive a tribute, produced “The Plague.”

    The jury, presided over by French-Iranian actor Golshifteh Farahani, handed out two Jury prizes ex aequo for “Olmo,” directed by Fernando Eimbcke, and Cole Webley’s “Omaha.”

    “Olmo,” produced by Plan B (a Mediawan company) and Michel Franco, follows the journey of a Mexican-American family through the eyes of a 14-year-old teen who is stuck at home caring for his bedridden father. The movie world premiered at the Berlin Film Festival.

    “Omaha,” meanwhile, is a road trip drama that premiered at Sundance and revolves around a struggling widower who takes his children on an unexpected cross-country road trip after a family tragedy.

    Kristen Stewart’s “Chronology of Water” won the Revelation Award, while Scarlett Johansson’s “Eleanor the Great” won the audience nod.

    “Eleanor the Great,” which opened at Cannes, is a heartwarming drama starring June Squibb as a 90-year-old woman trying to rebuild her life after the death of her best friend. Johansson’s directorial debut, the film earned warm reviews at Cannes and marks the first partnership between Sony Pictures Classics and TriStar Pictures. 

    Based on Lidia Yuknavitch’s memoir of the same name, “Chronology of Water” follows a woman (Imogen Poots) who emerges from an abusive childhood and channels her trauma into competitive swimming, sexual exploration, toxic relationships and addiction, before eventually discovering her voice as a writer.

    Stewart, who also took part in a Deauville masterclass earlier today where she highlighted the French movies that have influenced her as an actor and filmmaker, came on stage to accept her award and said it had taken her eight years to make the film.

    “It was enough for me to even be allowed to make this movie,” she said, after apologizing for not speaking French. “I understand it’s a common story for first filmmakers to have it feel impossible, but the uphill battle on this one felt so personal and not for me, Kristen, but for me, girl.”

    “And I know that it was the subject matter and the form, but it’s because I was trying to make a movie about bleeding, and the digging and the climb that it takes to unearth a voice in a world masterfully designed to silence us — It took 8 fucking years,” Stewart said.

    “Chronology of Water,” which premiered at Cannes’ Un Certain Regard, was mainly produced by Charles Gillibert at Paris-based CG Cinema International, and was acquired by The Forge for U.S. distribution.

    Farahani, whose jury comprised Thomas Cailley, Eye Haïdara, Katell Quillévéré, Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu, Vincent Macaigne, Benjamin Millepied and Emilie Tronche, delivered a poignant speech in which she addressed the political tumults in the U.S. and conflicts in different parts of the world.

    “This year more than ever, American cinema has appeared to us as a fractured mirror of the state of the world,” she said. “Through the films we have seen, chosen and passionately debated, one image has emerged: that of a vast, powerful country in freefall from its foundations. An America that is failing, not through a lack of creativity, but through the abandonment of what makes society.”

    The ceremony was followed by the special screening of “A Private Life,” Rebecca Zlotowski’s humor-laced psychological thriller starring Jodie Foster and Daniel Auteuil, among others. The film was acquired by Sony Pictures Classics and is one of the five movies shortlisted by France’s Oscar committee for the international feature film race.

    Elskes

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  • First Joel Edgerton and Clint Bentley Became Fathers. Then They Made ‘Train Dreams’

    Train Dreams, the 2011 novella by Denis Johnson, had a profound effect on both Clint Bentley and Joel Edgerton. The story, about a logger named Robert Grainier who helps build railroads at the turn of the 20th century, is a moving meditation on grief, change, and one’s place in the world. “I found myself thinking about things from it years after reading it,” says Bentley. “It gets in people’s bones and just sticks to them.”

    That’s true of Edgerton as well, though he and Bentley didn’t know each other when they each first encountered the novel. Bentley read it some 14 years ago; Edgerton first stumbled upon the book a few years later. He immediately started looking into acquiring the rights to make an adaptation, but at the time, they’d already been snatched up.

    Edgerton now sees that as a good thing. By the time Bentley reached out to him about Train Dreams, both Bentley and Edgerton had become fathers, and had been through more highs and lows in their own lives. Those big life moments would weave their way into their version of Train Dreams, directed by Bentley and starring Edgerton, and adapted by Bentley and his Sing Sing cowriter Greg Kwedar. Their movie is delicate and deeply existential, with breathtaking imagery and a moving, heartbreaking performance at its center.

    “The story tells me that life is really worth living, despite some of the hardships,” says Edgerton. “Through Robert, there was this sense that human beings are incredibly durable and incredibly resilient.”

    “I was 50 when I shot the film, and a large part of the aspects of Robert in the book felt like they were experiences that I had thought about and had,” says Edgerton.

    © 2025 BBP Train Dreams. LLC.

    Train Dreams, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and will next play the Toronto Film Festival on September 9, follows Grainier (Edgerton) as he comes of age in the Pacific Northwest and falls in love with Gladys (Felicity Jones). They build a home and have a daughter, but Grainier’s work often forces him to travel far from his family. He then suffers a devastating loss that upends his entire way of life, leaving him searching for meaning and reflecting on the rapidly changing American landscape.

    Bentley began working on his script for Train Dreams just as he had his first son, which was also around the time he lost both his parents in quick succession. “I wanted to express that aspect of grief that happens right away,” he says. “But then there’s an aspect that stays with you—the filter that it puts over the rest of your life.”

    Bentley was looking for a lead who could relay the wide range of emotions Grainier experiences without using many words. “I come from a working-class background. My uncle was a logger and my grandfather was a rancher,” says Bentley. “They’re these men who on the surface don’t seem to be thinking much because they’re not saying much, and yet they say three words and it’s something very deep and resonant and beautiful.”

    Jones plays Robert's wife Gladys.

    Jones plays Robert’s wife Gladys.

    © 2025 BBP Train Dreams. LLC.

    Bentley reached out to Edgerton—not only because the actor had played similarly internal characters in films like Loving and Midnight Special, but also because he had another side to him. “He plays a lot of hard and tough characters,” the director says of Edgerton. At the same time, he has “this very sweet quality to him, a boyishness that I think we haven’t seen in a lot of his roles.”

    Rebecca Ford

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  • The Real Science Behind ‘Dark Matter’ Will Melt Your Gray Matter

    The Real Science Behind ‘Dark Matter’ Will Melt Your Gray Matter

    Meanwhile, his wife gradually realizes that her husband is not her husband as the subtle clues pile up—his way of dressing, his renewed passion, his temper. “I don’t think it’s a show about contentment and settling,” Connelly says. “It’s about finding. At the center of it, you have this family, and you have this couple who kind of lose each other at some point in their marriage. They have to find each other again.”

    She notes that this is a real-life phenomenon, not a sci-fi one: People change, sometimes irreconcilably, especially after a long time together. “There isn’t only one version of happiness that’s true,” Connelly says. “There are so many versions that we could choose in our lives. So I think there’s something kind of beautiful in this couple that reaffirms that, and [they choose] each other.”

    Joining Jason1 in his search through the multiverse is Amanda (Alice Braga), the girlfriend of Jason2—who is one of the few people to believe his story when Jason1 awakens, bewildered and desperate, in his kidnapper’s home world. To her, he is the love of her life. To him, she is a stranger.

    Anthony Breznican

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  • What to Watch on Streaming This Week: February 23-29

    What to Watch on Streaming This Week: February 23-29

    Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal in All of Us Strangers. Photo by Parisa Taghizadeh, Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures

    From a major Oscar winner to one of this year’s biggest awards snubs, this week is filled with some recent quality content. Plus, a fun new spin-off of The Good Wife, FX’s newest blockbuster series, and some animated fun are all premiering.

    What to watch on Netflix

    Everything Everywhere All at Once 

    With the Oscars now less than a month away, why not refresh your awards season memory by watching last year’s undeniable winner? Everything Everywhere All at Once all but swept the season, taking home seven Oscars (including Best Picture). In this genre-bending exercise in action and absurdism, Michelle Yeoh stars as Evelyn, a middle-aged Chinese immigrant who’s struggling to hold her life together: her business is getting audited by the IRS (represented by Jamie Lee Curtis), her husband (Ke Huy Quan) feels like their marriage is a mess, and her daughter (Stephanie Hsu) is tired of her mom not accepting her. Everything Everywhere All at Once streams Friday, February 23rd. Read Observer’s review.

    The Tourist

    A British export recently picked up by Netflix, The Tourist is a thrilling ride. Jamie Dornan stars as a man who, in Season 1, woke up alone and amnesiac in the Australian Outback. With a bevy of people out to get him, he had to act fast to try to piece together his true identity. Now, in Season 2, Dornan’s Elliot has an idea of who he is, and it’s not pretty. He ventures back to his native Ireland with Constable Helen Chambers (Danielle Macdonald), where plenty of surprises await. Season 2 of The Tourist premieres Thursday, February 29th.

    What to watch on Hulu

    All of Us Strangers 

    A moving, heartbreaking, devastatingly relatable drama, All of Us Strangers takes a fantastical conceit and makes it into one of last year’s most human films. Andrew Scott stars as a lonely writer, dealing with unresolved guilt from his parents’ sudden passing several decades ago. But after a chance encounter with one of his apartment block’s few other residents (Paul Mescal), he ventures to his childhood home and finds his parents, exactly as they were all those years earlier. It’s a difficult needle to thread, but writer-director Andrew Haigh does it with a deep sense of sympathy. All of Us Strangers premiered Thursday, February 22nd. Read Observer’s review.

    Shōgun 

    Based on the novel of the same name, Shōgun is a new historical epic on FX. The series take place in feudal Japan, where three people’s paths intertwine. First, there’s the shipwrecked English sailor, John Blackstone (Cosmo Jarvis); second, there’s Lord Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada), who’s contending with his keen political rivals; lastly, there’s the Lady Moriko (Anna Sawai), whose necessary skills belie her mysterious past. It’s a sprawling drama filled with political intrigue, richly realized medieval battles, and fascinating characters, all coming together to make a spectacle of a show. Shōgun will be available to stream Tuesday, February 27th.

    What to watch on Amazon Prime

    The Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy 

    Following Hazbin Hotel, Amazon is looking to further bulk up its adult animated slate with The Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy. The series follows Dr. Sleech (Stephanie Hsu) and Dr. Klak (Keke Palmer), a pair of brilliant besties with expertise in all sorts of intergalactic injuries and illnesses. But when a new patient presents a new possibility to cure a universal ill, they decide to take the opportunity—even if they may lose their lives (or their licenses) in the process. The rest of the talented voice cast includes Kieran Culkin, Maya Rudolph, Natasha Lyonne, and Sam Smith. The Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy premieres Friday, February 23rd.

    The Green Knight 

    An Arthurian legend stunningly brought to life by filmmaker David Lowery, A24’s The Green Knight stars Dev Patel as Gawain. Taking cues from the 14th century poem, the film follows Gawain as he strikes down the mystical Green Knight for glory—in exchange for an equal blow bestowed by the knight the following year. It’s a medieval fantasy movie that feels decidedly out of place in the ‘20s, but that’s a good thing. The supporting cast of Alicia Vikander, Joel Edgerton, Barry Keoghan, and Sarita Choudhury help instill things with dread and mystery in equal measure, and Patel makes for quite the convincing knight. The Green Knight streams until Thursday, February 29th. Read Observer’s review.

    What to watch on Paramount+

    Elsbeth 

    The Good Wife has already spawned a successful spin-off in The Good Fight, and now Elsbeth is ready to join the proceedings. Carrie Preston returns as fan-favorite Elsbeth Tascioni, the brilliant but unusual attorney. This new series sees her uprooting her successful Chicago career and bringing her unique talents to New York, where she works with NYPD Captain Wagner (Wendell Pierce) and Officer Blanke (Carra Patterson) to solve a litany of legal cases. For a character that’s existed in the background of shows for over a decade, it’s sure to be an interesting adventure for Elsbeth. Elsbeth will be available to stream starting Thursday, February 29th.

    What to Watch is a regular endorsement of movies and TV worth your streaming time.

    What to Watch on Streaming This Week: February 23-29

    Laura Babiak

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  • The Boys in the Boat Interview: George Clooney & Joel Edgerton Talk True Story

    The Boys in the Boat Interview: George Clooney & Joel Edgerton Talk True Story

    ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke with The Boys in the Boat director George Clooney and star Joel Edgerton about the biographical sports movie. The duo discussed the true story and the experience of working with a director who also acts. The film is set to debut in theaters on Monday, December 25.

    “The Boys in the Boat is a sports drama based on the #1 New York Times bestselling non-fiction novel written by Daniel James Brown,” reads the film‘s synopsis. “The film, directed by George Clooney, is about the 1936 University of Washington rowing team that competed for gold at the Summer Olympics in Berlin. This inspirational true story follows a group of underdogs at the height of the Great Depression as they are thrust into the spotlight and take on elite rivals from around the world.”

    Tyler Treese: George, one of my favorite aspects was the use of the sportscaster during the races. There was a real artistry to broadcasting during that time. And it doesn’t just set up like the stakes of the race. It really gives a view into the world and politics and everything that was going on at the time. Can you just speak to using that as a narrative device?

    George Clooney: Well, first of all, you have to have somebody who can speak in the time in a way without sounding like, “Whatever!” You have to have it not feel like a caricature. Interestingly, the character of Royal Brougham, who’s the broadcaster who does most of the stuff, writes this sort of poetic stuff and is a legend in Seattle. They have buildings named after it and stuff. So, it was always a choice. It’s hard to set up a narrative on what these guys are doing and where they are without somebody telling you.

    The best person to tell you is a sportscaster. They’re the ones when you watch the wide world of sports, and you’re watching skiing. You don’t know much about skiing, and they’re telling you, “Well, when he gets to that slalom, if he gets there by that period of time, he is going to win.” You need somebody to tell you where we are in the race, somehow, and where we are in life — because he does that, too. He talks about four kids coming from a poor place. So it was always a plan to use the narrator in it. It just felt like a perfect way to keep the story moving.

    Tyler Treese: Joel, Al Ulbrickson is a legendary figure for your performance. Did you try to look back at videos or talk to any family or people who knew him? What was your prep like?

    Joel Edgerton: The only things you can really access are bits of information and a few stats and some beautiful photographs, in which he’s dressed very well.

    George Clooney: He’s dressed well. [Laughs].

    Joel Edgerton: Which we tried to replicate. Jenny did an amazing job, actually. But no, it was really just about reading the book and reading about qualities of his and starting to build from that, plus the screenplay of trying to service the movie in the best way possible.

    The beauty of not being, with all respect, encumbered by him being an iconic worldwide iconic figure … that it could really be me plus the qualities that I could bring that I knew of him … I didn’t have any roadmap because, sadly, there’s no real footage of moving or audio footage of him.

    George, what blew me away after I saw the movie was doing research into the real history. There are so many moments where you would figure it was dramatized, but everything actually happened. When you were actually looking into the history, were you blown away when you saw the adversity that the humans and the team all overcame?

    George Clooney: Well, it was kind of crazy because, if you were watching this film or you’re reading this script and you see, “Oh, the cow coach gives them the money and they didn’t have the money,” and, “Oh, the kid got so sick he lost 15 pounds before the big race.” Or,” They put them on the outside lane and they didn’t hear the gun go off.” All of it happened.

    If you’d read that script and it was a made-up story, you’d go, “You can’t put all these in it — it’s just not realistic.” So that’s what was fun about it. It’s also a responsibility, because you have to try to make it cinematic and not feel goofy along the way. But the truth is, we had really wonderful actors to carry me through that.

    Joel, when you’re working with a director that has an acting background, is there something special about that? How does that work?

    Joel Edgerton: [Laughs]. Yeah, you just don’t listen! Yeah, no. I mean, look, I was there on the first week just watching George walk around going, “Shouldn’t you be in front of the camera?” [Laughs]. And then, that gave me this really cool evidence, which I sort of thought about beforehand. What makes a person spend time crafting something when they could easily just jump from set to set, picking up bags of cash as an actor? It means that he really cared about this — particularly because he wasn’t going to be in front of the camera, too. That the passion was there to just tell this story.

    The worst case scenario to be directed by an actor is that an actor-director comes up to you every moment and goes, “Let me just show you how I would do it,” which can happen. It didn’t happen, thankfully, in this, but if it did, it probably wouldn’t have been a bad thing anyway.

    George Clooney: All I would say is, I’ve been directed by actors before, too, and I always find there’s a bit of a shorthand. I can look at him and know what he’s doing and he can look at me and know what I need. As opposed to, some directors will come over to you and they’ll talk to us like we’re idiots. They’ll go, “I think that the reason you’re delivering pizza is because your parents were alcoholics. [Laughs]. That’s why you become a pizza delivery guy.”

    For me, I’m like, “I just need you to ring the doorbell and say ‘pizza.’ I say to him, ‘Pizza,’ and he goes, ‘Got it.’” You know? It’s a huge blessing, actually, to have actors who — he directs. So when I say to him, “Okay, so I need us to get to there and then and walk out the door.” He goes, “Where do you want me to be?” And I go, “I need you to get over there.” He goes, “Done.” And that helps.

    Tyler Treese

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