Paul Schneider Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Burt and Verona (John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph) don't quite have things figured out yet. I mean, they pretty much have each other pegged, enjoying a marriage-less relationship, keeping each other warm on those cold Colorado nights, and they know that they want to bring a kid into this world -- well, want to or not, the baby's coming, and so they'll keep it warm as well.

Their parents won't be of much help. After all, his (Catherine O'Hara and Jeff Daniels) are making plans to take off for Europe just before the baby's due, a trip years in the making and selfish as all get out, while hers passed away some time back. So Burt and Verona decide to visit other family and friends, looking for people they can depend on in places they could grow up in, let alone grow old in -- looking for a place that might help them figure out together the whys and hows of keeping it all together.

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art ... Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, And so live ever -- or else swoon to death. John Keats

Yes, we've finally got more news about the John Keats film, Bright Star, that has been brewing since 2006, and I'm happy to say that this isn't just some casting notice that might, or might not, come to fruition. Jane Campion's film about the famous poet has finally begun production in the UK, and has got two more cast members. Variety reports that Paul Schneider and Kerry Fox will be joining Ben Whishaw, who already signed on to play Keats, and Abbie Cornish, who is taking on the role of the poet's muse -- Fanny Brawne.

Here's another entry in the Good Sundance Movies with Rotten Titles category: Pretty Bird. The directorial debut of Paul Schneider (he wrote All the Real Girls and acted in movies like Elizabethtown, The Family Stone and The Assassination of Jesse James), Pretty Bird has nothing to do with birds. The closest the film comes to "birds" is the jet-propelled "rocket belt" that causes all sorts of problems for everyone involved. But, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Curtis Prentiss (Billy Crudup) is one hell of a schmoozer. He may not have many talents -- heck, he's not even all that smart -- but Curtis does have some very strong social skills -- and he seems like he could easily sell ice cubes to an Eskimo if he had to. Prentiss pops in to visit an old college friend named Kenny (the excellent David Hornsby), who is more than happy to invest in Curtis latest venture: a rocket belt. Kenny throws a whole lot of cash Curtis' way, and then the duo decides that they need an actual engineer to get this project "off the ground" -- and to that end they hire an out-of-work (and hot-tempered) rocket expert named Rick Honeycutt (the hilarious Paul Giamatti).

The Write Stuff interview series continues this week with Nancy Oliver. Nancy got her big break writing for one of my all-time favorite television shows -- Six Feet Under. She also wrote the script for the wonderful new film Lars and the Real Girl. The movie is about a young man named Lars (Ryan Gosling), his relationship with a sex doll, and how it affects those around him. Lars is in theaters now.

Cinematical: Take us through how you got your start as a writer.

Nancy Oliver: I have always written, since I was a little girl. I would rather have been a rock star, but that didn't work out. I got serious about it when I was about 21, which was a while ago. I had seen Saturday Night Live, and at the time I was acting in college, but nobody was casting me because I was totally wrong for everything. So seeing SNL, I started thinking I could do that. Alan Ball and I were friends in college so we put on our first show together and it took off from there. We had a theater company for a long time, and wrote and produced all our material.

Cinematical: Was the desire ever to get into another medium or would you have been happy doing that the rest of your life?

NO: I was interested in every kind of writing. I was possessed by theater because I had the means to do it, whereas to get to a camera is a different sort of path. I didn't head specifically for television or film until I had sort of already turned myself into a writer. I wanted to have a certain command of what I did and a certain knowledge of styles, and I just wanted to be able to handle myself technically and in terms of craft before I came to L.A.

Cinematical: And Six Feet Under was your first television gig? How did you get on there?

NO: Yeah, it was my first legit job. I had been writing content for the website for a year, and I had a job reading scripts for Alan. After the first two seasons, they changed up the writing staff, and I came on in the third season. We had worked together for over 20 years, but the job came as a big surprise to me. I didn't expect it and didn't go looking for it. And I was actually going back to Florida at the time, giving up on show business when the Six Feet Under job came through.

I sure would have liked to have been a fly on the wall when Six Feet Under scribe Nancy Oliver pitched her script for Lars and the Real Girl: "See, it's about this guy who falls in love with a sex doll -- only he doesn't use the doll for sex, see? He's delusional, and he really thinks she's a real person, get it? Oh, but it's not a comedy, it's really kind of melancholy and depressing." Not the sexiest pitch in the world to have to sell, is it? And yet, the concept works -- and works very well -- if you're able to suspend a fair amount of disbelief.

The best thing about the film, nor surprisingly, is Ryan Gosling, who's proven to have quite a remarkable range as an actor. In last year's Half Nelson, Gosling made a crack-addicted middle-school teacher sympathetic; as Lars, he takes on the challenge of creating an emotionally disconnected and delusional character that the audience can connect with. It's a difficult trick to pull off; the character of Lars is so completely out of touch emotionally and socially from everyone around him, that the hardest bit to suspend disbelief around is that any of the people in the small town in which he lives would actually go to the lengths they do in order to help him. But maybe I'm just jaded from eight years of living in Seattle, where people tend to refer to the interpersonal dynamic as "Seattle-friendly" (translation: friendly enough on the surface, but the emotional walls don't come down too easily).

I was hoping for a chance to see The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford a second time before I wrote my review, but only to confirm my suspicions that it's a surprising near-masterpiece, certainly one of the year's best films, and the best Western to come across the range since Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven (1992) and Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man (1996). I had been looking forward to the film, mainly because 2007 had previously yielded two very good Westerns in Seraphim Falls and 3:10 to Yuma (we'll say nothing more about the wretched September Dawn). I had also admired New Zealand director Andrew Dominik's previous and only other feature, Chopper (2000). But none of this prepared me for the scope, artistry and brilliance of this new film.

The drawback is that the 160-minute The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is going to be one of those "difficult" movies that doesn't get the recognition it deserves, mainly because it can't be quickly explained or understood, or broken down into a 30-second sound byte. It's not a sweeping, spectacular epic, but rather a quiet, wintry epilogue. It will be critiqued with single words: "long," "boring," "confusing." Nevertheless, it's in good company with Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, Jane Campion's In the Cut, Gus Van Sant's Gerry, George A. Romero's Land of the Dead, Terrence Malick's The New World, Brian De Palma's The Black Dahlia, Terry Zwigoff's Art School Confidential, Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette, David Lynch's Inland Empire and William Friedkin's Bug -- all movies that will eventually have their day in the sun despite their current sad critical standing. The real hitch is that Jesse James chooses not to deconstruct the James myth, as would be the expected, rational approach in our post-modern age, but rather embraces it and expands on it.

The initial footage for Lars and the Real Girl, which came out last month, presented a quirky, jaw-dropping world where Ryan Gosling gets a Real Doll to cure his loneliness. It looked to be a strange, black, indie comedy -- lots of laughs and possible lasciviousness. But that just skims the surface of this film, and to call it a comedy is to ignore the profound depth of Craig Gillespie's feature. While the title insinuates that it's a wacky comedy, it's actually a smart, well-crafted, and heart-wrenching film that smoothly discusses the intricacies of loss and depression. It has many humorous moments, but they serve to relieve tension, not drive the story.

Lars is a young man who spent much of his life alone with his widower father. When his dad finally passed on, his brother, Gus (Paul Schneider), moved home with his wife, Karin (Emily Mortimer). With his brother back and his father gone, Lars retreated not only to the garage, but further into himself. Karin, however, is determined to break Lars out of his shell and get him involved in the family. It is obvious that he cares about them, but at the same time, he uses any excuse possible to avoid Karin's invitations.

According to JoBlo, Paul Giamatti and Emily Mortimer have signed on to star in the indie comedy Pretty Bird for Paul Schneider who, from the looks of it, will make his directorial debut on the film. Up until this point, Schneider has primarily done work as an actor, starring in films like Elizabethtown, Live Free or Die and The Family Stone. Giamatti, who's been dabbling in drama as of late, returns to a quirky comedic role which sort of reminds me of his take on Harvey Pekar in American Splendor. Pretty Bird finds him playing a lovable loser who attempts to invent a rocket belt in hopes that it will make him famous. In order to make it work, he enlists help from some of his friends -- only they succeed, and subsequently begin to turn on one another. Giamatti will produce the film along with his wife Liz.

The always-enjoyable Mortimer will play a girl named Mandy; the Director of Marketing for their rocket belt operation. How does one go about marketing a rocket belt in this day and age? I'm not exactly sure, but I do know that the film will shoot in New Jersey this August -- which means my original question will have to become even more complex: How do you market a rocket belt in New Jersey? Giamatti will next show up on screen as a badass villain in Shoot 'Em Up, opposite Clive Owen. Based on the trailer (in which Giamatti looked absolutely nuts), I'd say it will be one of his more fascinating roles. He'll also appear next to Vince Vaughn in Fred Claus later this winter. Mortimer, on the other hand, can next be seen playing a (real-life doll?) in the upcoming Lars and the Real Girl.