Actress and screenwriter Greta Gerwig goes behind the camera for "Lady Bug"; producer/director Brett Ratner is the latest Hollywood figure to be accused of sexual harassment and misconduct; young L.A. dancers audition for Miami City Ballet's "The Nutcracker."
Young ballerinas take center stage at these 'Nutcracker' auditions
It's beginning to look a lot like ... "Nutcracker" season.
Here in Los Angeles, the Miami City Ballet will perform the holiday classic at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in December. The ballet has about 60 roles for young dancers, and the Colburn School recently held two summer workshops and an audition for those coveted spots.
“When I lived in New York City, I had all these holiday traditions that I would do with my own children,” said Jenifer Ringer, dean of the dance institute at the Colburn School. “When we moved out here to Los Angeles ... I couldn’t find it.”
Ringer is a former principal with the New York City Ballet, where she danced for 24 years. Like any good, card-carrying ballerina, she’s intimately familiar with “The Nutcracker.”
“The ballet was created, I think, with the intention of being a family ballet,” she explained. “So there’s obviously all these children roles. Two of the principal characters — Marie and the Nutcracker Prince — are children, as well as Marie’s little brother, Fritz. There’s a whole scene that takes place in Marie’s house. She gets the Nutcracker doll, and then she goes into a magical snow forest and then onto Candy Land at the end. The ballet wouldn’t exist without the children.”
Miami City Ballet will perform choreographer George Balanchine’s version of “The Nutcracker,” which Ringer considers the gold standard.
“They’re not just sitting there holding a flower and waving back and forth,” she said. “They’re doing actual steps and actual formations. We wanted to bring the Colburn School students’ level up higher so that they’re prepared to do this choreography. So we made these two ‘Nutcracker’ workshops to start getting them used to some of the steps. We have a ballet technique class every morning. While they’re having lunch, we’re showing them film of this particular version of ‘The Nutcracker.’ And then from 12-to-2 we have rehearsals.”
In a morning class, one of the workshop attendees is 10-year-old Josephine Kim from Atwater Village, who started dancing when she was two.
“School is kind of a lot to work with, and then dancing is kind of the opposite of school, ’cause you get to just move around and not do math problems, I guess,” Kim said, laughing.
Amy Sierra, who lives downtown and started dancing when she was four, said: “I’m excited to learn it, because I have actually never been to a ‘Nutcracker’ dance. And when I’ve seen the show [on tape], I see happiness.”
Amy is in the Everybody Dance Program, which provides instruction for kids from underserved communities. Most of the 70 kids at the workshop were Colburn students, but the school also invited Everybody Dance participants.
Asked what she likes most about ballet, Amy said: “I like how it shows your passion and what’s inside of you that no one sees.”
A few weeks later, it’s the big day — auditions. Outside the audition room, a gaggle of nervous parents waited for their pint-sized ballerinas.
“I’m nervous,” admitted Lynn Keyes of Glassell Park, who had two daughters auditioning. “[It's] getting towards the end of the day, and these are the last couple auditions ... so, yeah — parents are excited and worried, and have all the feelings that the kids do.”
Jennifer Ward of Pasadena also had two daughters auditioning.
“I think this is a great experience for the children to go through something," said Ward, "and ... maybe they’re not going to make it this time, but we’ll cowboy up, right? You get up and you try it again. I think that’s what I love about the experience of even having the children trying out.”
Not every kid will be overjoyed with the outcome of their audition, but Keyes said these workshops have prepared them for that.
“The group of children coming from all over Los Angeles, all different types of backgrounds and technique, coming from different studios,” Keyes said. “They have a good time in class, and we’ve seen some kids move on to other auditions. And some kids go home, and they’re just really supportive of each other, [saying]: If we don’t get in this year, we’re gonna go to the show and we’ll support all of our friends that did get in and just appreciate it for the performance that it is.”
To listen to this audio story, click on the player above.
Filmmaker Brett Ratner faces allegations of sexual misconduct
Victims of sexual harassment in Hollywood continue to tell their stories. Now, allegations have surfaced against Brett Ratner — a filmmaker best known for directing the "Rush Hour" trilogy. Warner Bros. cut ties with the director later in the day.
Six women — including actresses Olivia Munn, Natasha Henstridge and Katharine Towne — have made allegations against Ratner describing sexual harassment or misconduct.
Amy Kaufman and Daniel Miller broke the story for the Los Angeles Times. Miller spoke with The Frame's John Horn.
MILLER: The allegations range from aggressive come-ons, and then in the case of Natasha Henstridge, she has alleged that Brett Ratner forced her to perform oral sex in the 1990s.
Ratner is a prominent figure in Hollywood. He co-founded the movie production and financing company, RatPac-Dune Entertainment, which had a contract with Warner Bros. studios.
MILLER: In 2013, RatPac-Dune inked a $450 million co-financing deal with Warner Bros. Warner has now said — in the wake of our story about these alleged incidents with Ratner — that it is reviewing its relationship with Ratner ... that is likely going to be a relationship that is going to be scrutinized in the coming days.
Ratner's company has been involved with many hit films, including "Gravity," "The LEGO Movie," "American Sniper," "The Revenant" and many others.
One of Ratner's former partners is U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who sold his interest in RatPac Entertainment earlier this year.
Ratner was scheduled to produce and direct a biopic about Hugh Hefner. but Playboy Enterprises announced that its relationship with the filmmaker is now on hold.
Ratner’s lawyer, Martin Singer, has denied the validity of all the allegations to the Los Angeles Times. We reached out to Singer for comment but received no response.
In a 10-page letter to The Times, Singer said: “I have represented Mr. Ratner for two decades, and no woman has ever made a claim against him for sexual misconduct or sexual harassment. Furthermore, no woman has ever requested or received any financial settlement from my client.”
This story has been updated.
Greta Gerwig didn't want 'Lady Bird' to be a typical teen girl movie
The lead character in Greta Gerwig's new movie, "Lady Bird," is not trying to land the affection of that one cool guy at the school. Gerwig tells The Frame: "I love 'Say Anything.' I love 'Pretty in Pink.' I love 'Sixteen Candles.' And I love the modern versions of them too. But I feel like that's not what life is like."
Instead, Lady Bird (played by Saorsie Ronan) is an independent-minded high school senior who is desperate to break out of her ordinary life in Sacramento. Sure, she wants to fall in love and have sex, but she also wants to attend college in New York or, as Lady Bird says, "at least Connecticut or New Hampshire where writers live in the woods." Gerwig goes on:
It's like, this girl grew up on those movies. Man, she had "Titanic." That'll screw you for life. That will make you believe that something's going to happen that's not going to happen. And so I felt like I wanted to be both inside that psychology and also the movie wasn't in it. That was something I wanted to play with.
When "Lady Bird" premiered at the Telluride Film Festival, The Frame's John Horn caught up with Gerwig. They began by talking about these name tags he saw her wearing in photos from the set of "Lady Bird." It turns out that they came from an idea she borrowed from Mike Mills, who directed her in "20th Century Women." "I've learned countless things from people," Gerwig says. "I've had good fortune to talk to a lot of them more directly before I started shooting."
What Gerwig learned about directing from other directors:
Mike Mills
As an actor, you're always brought in when everything's ready and the lights are set and we're all ready to go. And it's a difficult thing to know everybody's name — and especially when people switch out. And I thought it was such a kind, beautiful thing that Mike had everybody wear name tags everyday. So that if it was a different boom operator, you didn't say, Hey, you. You could say, Oh, Joe, could you...? So I stole that from him and that is one of the benefits of being an actress — you get to see a lot of different sets and what works and what doesn't.
I think from Mike Mills I learned a lot about creating a perimeter around the actors so they feel safe with each other — that the actors should have their own magic relationship with each other.
Spike Jonze
Spike gave me great advice. One of his pieces of advice is, if you feel bad about a shot, just start turning off lights. And it was really smart. But also it just gives you a second to think about what's wrong. And it was a very smart thing.
Noah Baumbach
From Noah, who I've worked with as an actor three times ["Greenberg," "Frances Ha" and "Mistress America"] and I've written with, he runs an incredibly calm set. He also forbids cellphones, which I did. It's a bummer to look over and see someone texting and it breaks the actor's concentration.
Whit Stillman
Whit ["Damsels in Distress"] does speed throughs on lines. Because if you can do it 10 times faster than we need you to, it can sink into your muscle memory differently.
How Gerwig created a vibe on the set of "Lady Bird":
I'm a big believer in that films are mysterious. I think a lot of energy gets into them that was the ambience on the set. I definitely would play music a lot. That was something that I've always liked when a director sets the mood by music. So I had a tiny boombox and ... I would know what we were shooting everyday and I'd have songs that I was specifically gunning for. It wasn't like I was picking them at the moment. I actually made playlists for every single day of shooting. And I just felt like it brought everybody into the same space.
This [set] was one of the special ones, I will say. And everybody felt it. And when it ended, my first [assistant director] said, Just so you know — they're not all like this. And I said, Oh, I know they're not. But it was a very warm, loving, supportive group. And, really, when you make independent films — small films — the only reason anyone's there is because they want to be there. So that kind of does some of the work for you.
Why she set the film in 2002-2003:
The glib answer is I didn't want to shoot smartphones because so much of teenage life now happens on smartphones. And I don't think they're that interesting to look at. So that's one reason. I had already graduated by the time the Iraq War started. I was in college. But I felt like there was this period of time after 9/11 happened, and then 18 months later we had invaded Iraq. And it felt like, in an instant, an entirely new age had been ushered into geopolitical movements and what was happening internationally and [with] the U.S.' position. And what is interesting to me is how those things happen simultaneously with your life — that the world is not divided up into history over there and your personal life over here. It all happens together. I felt like to set it after 9/11 and right during the invasion of Iraq, it's what we're now living through. I mean, we still have troops there. So that was a way of introducing what I see is now our modern time.
What Gerwig does and does not have in common with the character of Lady Bird:
She has a line: I wish I could live through something, which, I don't know, my particular generation, I think it felt like everything had happened. Like the '60s were done. What are we doing now? ... It felt like, What are we defined by? And I think this is general to all teenagers — you're so certain that life is happening somewhere else and that it's not happening to you. So that feeling of, I just have to go get where the life is. And you get to the place where you think the life is, then you realize it's not there and it had already happened. It's the loneliness of getting what you want and getting to the place and realizing it's not what you thought. But that definitely I related to ... I think Lady Bird was a far more confident, cocky, strange person than I was. She is not how I was. She's from some other part of my brain, but that part I connected to.
"Lady Bird" is in theaters on Nov. 3.
To hear John Horn's full interview with Greta Gerwig, click on the player above. To get more content like this, subscribe to The Frame podcast on iTunes.