Cannes 2008: 'Changeling' Press Conference

The Changeling press conference the other day was, not surprisingly, a packed affair, with throngs of journalists crowding in to get a look at Clint Eastwood, Angelina Jolie, and the Jolie baby bump. Honestly, I've never seen so many people so fascinated with the silhouette of a pregnant woman -- the Jolie frenzy here has been interesting to watch. She looked, also not surprisingly, glowingly fantastic. Also on hand to field questions were producer Brian Grazer and his famously spiky hair, and screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski.

Gallery: Cannes in Photos: Changeling Press Conference

The questions at this conference, overall, weren't as insightful as some of the other conferences. The moderator icily shut down one hapless journalist who tried to ask a question of Eastwood about Iwo Jima, but there were a couple of interesting responses to some other questions.

Jolie was asked to compare her role in Changeling to the somewhat similar distraught-woman role she played in last year's A Mighty Heart, and whether the emotional level of her performance in Changeling was influenced by her own real-life role as a mother. She talked about the main difference being the time period, that in Changeling, "this was a time when women did not have the right to speak out," and "that she didn't know what happened to her child was wrenching." She added, though, that she didn't call upon herself in finding the role's emotional center, because she didn't want to play it strictly how she herself would react.

Rather, Jolie said that she shaped the role of Christine Collins more after her own mother, who died shortly before Changeling commenced shooting, describing her mother as a quiet, soft-spoken woman who would become a lioness if her children were ever threatened.

Eastwood, asked about the difficulties of making a narrative film out of a true story, talked about corruption in the Los Angeles police department at the time and that it's something that seems to be revisited there every few years. He noted that the time period was a factor in this case, as was the fact that Collins, as a single mother, was an easier target for what happened, adding, "but their lackadaisical attitude came back to haunt them" because they underestimated Collins' tenacity.

Eastwood seemed a bit befuddled by a question about whether he has "a problem with authority figures," responding only that he likes stories because of their dramatic value, and this story about a woman going up against authority figures had that dramatic conflict.

Asked whether the situation in the story could happen today, Jolie replied that, here in America, things for women have certainly changed since then, but that it's important to remember that there are places throughout the world where women are abused by those in power, and that there are global issues of police corruption and oppression of people that we can't forget about, that still need to be resolved.

The subject of the film's reported title change (to The Exchange) came up at the end of the conference. Jolie replied that the title change was just in French, because "Changeling didn't translate." When the journalist pushed back, saying that we'd gotten it in writing that the title was to change for the US as well, Jolie, Eastwood and Grazer seemed taken aback; Jolie said, "If that's the case, it's certainly news to us." Interesting that, if the title change is true, the director wouldn't have been informed prior to a press conference.

As Hollywood Elsewhere's Jeff Wells noted yesterday, Anne Thompson reported in Variety that Grazer thinks the title will stay Changeling in the US, but he's "not 100% sure." Personally, I much prefer Changeling as the title, even though it somewhat evokes The Changeling, the great horror film with George C. Scott. The Exchange sounds more like a bad movie about a drug deal or wife swapping to me.