Norah Ringma

Dante Ariola, film director — on casting his two leads in ‘Arthur Newman’, his first feature film — as heard on Movie Geeks United

“I am a big fan of flawed protagonists or a main character that is truly flawed. Wallace/Arthur is definitely that. He’s done some things that aren’t very admirable, like abandoning his son, or at least not being really there for him and then when he takes on this persona of Arthur Newman he’s such a blowhard at times, he almost straddles unlikeable or prickly, at best.

That being said, I really needed to find an actor with truly inherent empathetic qualities that, despite those flaws, the audience would be willing to go on this journey with him and want him to come out on the other side changed.

And I just started going through actors and that’s when Colin’s name just popped into my head. And I was like, ‘Wow!’ It would be strange if he could play an American. Then I think, ‘That guy could do it.’ And then he read the script, loved it, we met in London and then that was that. There was never a list.

“So then, with Emily, this is how I ended up with two Brits in an American road film. I wanted an actor, because Colin Firth, it’s kind of like, ‘Oh, it’s a “Colin Firth” movie.’ That’s a big name for a very small film. Emily is a bit more prevalent now but I consider her to be a bit of a chameleon.

So, you know, there’s a bit of an age difference between them but I didn’t want, because there’s love scenes between them, I didn’t want the age aspect, this isn’t an ‘older man meets a younger woman’ movie. That age thing is just another thing that, on the surface, makes these people clearly incompatible. There’s no reason they should really be on this journey together. But really, I was just looking for someone that would fit into that and that would just be another element and also that they would have chemistry. 

“Colin and Emily, I think through Stanley Tucci, kind of knew each other ever so slightly personally. So it was kind of a great situation because the first day on the film they had never worked together or known each other as actors. The two characters in the film are feeling each other out and then they’re kind of feeling each other out professionally, getting to know each other. But, because they knew each other, there was like an inherent trust so I could tell immediately off screen and on the screen that there was a genuine chemistry so that’s kind of how we ended up with the two leads.”

Photo: fayobserver.com

Laura Linney, actor — on what happened when she began reading Noah Baumbach’s script for The Squid and the Whale — as heard on NPR Fresh Air

“You know, there’s a wonderful thing that happens every once in a while where you open a script and three pages in, your sort of actor brain turns on and you start working on it and you don’t even realize you’ve started working on it, you’re not even just reading it. And it was just so good.”

Photo: guardian.co.uk

Björn Ulvaeus, songwriter, composer, musician, writer, producer — on telling his five grandchildren about ABBA — as heard on BBC World Service Outlook 

“I may do that one of these days, maybe as a fairytale. ‘There was once this little boy in a small town who was given a guitar.’ You know, I might tell them that.”

Photo: travel.cnn.com

Zoë Wanamaker, American-born English actress — on dialects — as heard on BBC Radio 4 Front Row

Zoë Wanamaker: I have an American passport, I have American parents, I was born there.

Interviewer: Presumably you find the accent easier than a British actor might.

Zoë Wanamaker: I hope so. I still see a dialect coach just to make sure.

Interviewer: Dialect coaches say this, and you’re the perfect person to adjudicate, that the whole way in which British and American people use their mouths is entirely different and, broadly, that the British mumble and  Americans project but, ah, there is something in that. They’re quite different deliveries aren’t they?

Zoë Wanamaker: Yes. And of course, but then it’s like any acting, it’s about landscape, heat. A dialect coach told me about southern accents and that they keep their jaw very, very closed because they don’t want to get flies in their mouths. It’s too hot. And, um, those sort of, when I was doing the Crucible, a dialect coach was talking about a Suffolk accent, which is terribly difficult to do, Suffolk/Norfolk, and that is about the kind of flat land. So that, visually, helps my brain.

Photo: guardian.co.uk

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Nigerian author — on adopting and then shedding an American accent when she moved from Nigeria to the United States — as heard on BBC World Service Outlook

Interviewer:  Did you find yourself reinventing yourself to fit in with [American] society?

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: I think I did, the first few years. I think the first few years I felt a kind of vulnerability. I think many immigrants feel that because you want to fit in; you don’t want to stand out. And so, the first maybe four or five years I did a very good American accent. And it was very good, actually. 

Interviewer: Convincing.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: It’s hard for me to do it now but then I made a very conscious decision to stop. But I did. It was part of my not wanting to open my mouth to have people say, ‘Oh my God, where’re you from?’ So I just thought, ‘I’m going to do the American thing.’

Interviewer: What prompted your decision to stop?

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: What prompted my decision to stop was actually a phone conversation with this, what are those people called who want to sell you things? Telemarketers. It was, very small clarifying moments I’ve had in my life, it’s nothing big or grand. This man on the phone says to me,’Oh, you sound American.’ And I said, ‘Oh, thanks.’ And then I hung up and I thought, ‘Why did I just say thank you?’ And also I realized it takes such an effort to do the American. You know, I lived my  whole life until I was 20 saying ‘waTer’ and then it actually takes an emotional and mental effort to change that to ‘wadder’ so, you know, I thought it’s easier to talk like, you know, it comes more naturally for me to say ‘waTer’.

Interviewer: To a certain extent you were acting, presumably and that’s quite stressful.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Oh, yeah. Of course you’re acting.

Photo: guardian.co.uk

Lt Cdr Abhilash Tomy, first Indian to circumnavigate the globe, solo and non-stop — on why he didn’t talk to himself during the voyage — as heard on BBC World Service Outlook

Interviewer: Did you talk to yourself a lot when you were [alone at sea]?

Abhilash Tomy: Really, I did not talk to myself at all. I had to put an end to talking to myself because it was leading to a lot of negativity.

Interviewer: Oh really, so you were talking your spirits down, were you.

Abhilash Tomy: Ah, you know if you have a thought in your mind there is no distraction like you have on land so what happens is you keep thinking the same thought and invariably it leads to a lot of anger and stress. So, what I did was I just stopped talking to myself. I would meditate to keep it like that.

Photo: natgeotraveller.in

Colin Firth, actor — on the inherent nature of acting and putting on a mask — as heard on The Dinner Party Download, the Arthur Newman interview

“You know, in one way we’re telling lies, pretending to care about things that aren’t real and don’t care about. And none of what you’re seeing really happened and, even if it’s a factual story, it didn’t happen with these people, like this. It’s smoke and mirrors.

“But, on the other hand, there something truthful there and I think there’s a way in which putting a mask on can actually free you up to express something very authentically and truthfully.”

Photo: ‘The Truth Lies Behind the Mask’ by Erick Jimenez (Miami, FL) on smithsonianmag.com

Geoffrey Rush, actor — on his general approach for preparing a role — as heard on BBC Radio 4 Front Row

“I always very much enjoy the first meeting not only with the director, and that can sometimes happen over a cup of tea or a session on Skype, just to see how you actually get along socially because that’s going to be the fundamental communication you have when you start to work together. But I really enjoy the first meeting you have with the hair and the costume people because it’s very important for me. I think very much about the wide shots in the film or potential wide shots and you don’t often get them in films where you see a character at full length in the landscape and I like to find a very distinctive silhouette in terms of, you know, a more obvious example is when I first went for the costume fittings with Penny Rose for Pirates of the Caribbean. It was the moment the hat went on that everything fell into place. And we talked about what scenes might you see him in, for example, in his cabin on the ship where he might have the hat off. And the moment we took the hat off the whole character kind of disappeared because there was something about the flamboyance, the vanity, the decorative feather, the delusional look that this man thinks he’s a person of high status and yet he’s a kind of mongrel killer. Those two contradictory elements became the sort of base notes, I suppose, of approaching each and every scene.”

Photo: Daniel Boud

Evidence of the watchful eye of photographer Chris Ozer. You don’t compose shots like this. From the colours in the clothing and bedding to the light from the iPad shining on the child’s face to the story the photo tells, it’s what separates people who dabble in photography from truly gifted photographers.

Monday’s Mailbox — No. 20 in a series — My neighbour, an artist, adorned her mailbox with a portrait of her Scottish Terrier, Macduff.