Ewan McGregor and filmmaker Rodrigo Garcia share stories of making their movie about Jesus wandering the desert; Leon Bridges quick rise to soul stardom; Does box office impact Oscar voting?
Could 'The Martian' win a Best Picture Oscar?
The sci-fi tale “The Martian,” in which Matt Damon must be rescued from Mars, continues to soar at the box office.
Even though the new James Bond film “Spectre” took the top spot at the box office this weekend with around $70 million in domestic ticket sales, within the next day or two “The Martian” will pass $200 million in the U.S. alone.
That will make it only the second film this year — the other being Pixar’s “Inside Out” — that has hit that milestone without being a sequel or a spinoff, like “Jurassic World” and the last “Avengers” film. But is commercial success, even for a film with great reviews like “The Martian," actually a liability when it comes to the Oscar race? Or can moviegoer love help when it comes to Oscar voting?
We asked Justin Chang, chief film critic at Variety, about the relationship between box office performance and success at the Oscars. He talked about the paradigm shifts introduced by "The Hurt Locker" and "Lord of the Rings," plus whether genre films inherently have a tougher time during awards season.
Interview Highlights
This weekend, both "Spectre" and "The Peanuts Movie" performed well, but the biggest story might be the continued success of "The Martian." It's close to $200 million at the domestic box office, so when you have a movie that's both critically acclaimed and is doing well at the box office, do those two things start to coalesce with awards voters?
Yeah, I think it does, and I think exactly that kind of phenomenon that you're describing is what we're seeing with "The Martian." Before it premiered at Toronto, it was maybe a question mark as far as the awards season was concerned, although it certainly had the pedigree — it had Ridley Scott, though he hasn't made a film deemed to be award-worthy in a while.
It was very well-received, and I think that box office just gives it something like, "OK, we're on safe ground here." It's funny, because I think in general the Academy has, to its credit, not demanded that a film be some sort of box office juggernaut to win Best Picture.
Some people would say they've done that to a fault.
[laughs] The critic in me tells you that it's to its credit, and it's funny because they've given Best Picture to juggernauts like "Titanic" and "Lord of the Rings," but also to movies like "The Artist" and "The Hurt Locker." I think "Hurt Locker" was kind of a paradigm shift in filmmaking.
Because it only grossed about $15 million.
Yeah, and I think perception is a huge thing as well. "The Hurt Locker" always had that "little movie that could," the David versus Goliath narrative against "Avatar," and that became its own, very compelling narrative. That film never had high box office expectations to begin with, but something like "The Walk" or "Steve Jobs," both of which I think are quite good films but flopped, now have this real taint about them.
It's hard to categorize "The Martian" as a genre film, but I think some people would see it as an action-adventure story or an outer-space thriller. Do you think there's a bias against genre films? Is the bar set artificially high for how they have to be considered?
I think there's something about the degree to which genre is a movie — every movie can be classified according to a genre of some sort. But I think "Lord of the Rings" was a real game-changer because it was so clearly a fantasy, a total geek-fest of a movie that happened to be a great movie that connected with so many people.
In terms of something like "The Martian," you know, "Gravity" didn't win Best Picture, but I wouldn't even call "The Martian" sci-fi. It's more like science-faction? [laughs] It's a very realistic kind of science story, and I don't think it carries that kind of stigma — "Oh no, sci-fi!" [laughs]
How Leon Bridges found his soul in soul music
Leon Bridges is a young soul singer who has risen quickly in the music business in the last year. He sounds like he’s straight out of the 1950’s -- think Sam Cooke or Otis Redding-- but he’s only 26-years-old.
Just last year, he was washing dishes to pay the bills. But then he signed a deal with Columbia Records, and in June he released his debut album “Coming Home.” It premiered in the Top 10 on the billboard charts.
The Frame's James Kim spoke with Leon Bridges at San Francisco's Outside Lands Festival about how he took inspiration from his family stories to craft his retro-soul-R&B album:
My great aunt, when she heard the song ["Twistin' & Groovin'] I wrote about her sister, Eartha, she was just like, "Whoa. This is amazing!" I had to call her to get information on that song and talk to her, you know, "What was it like when Victor first met Eartha?" And she was like, "Oh, they were at a party and he saw her and he was like, Oh wee!"
I wrote a song about her because with certain stories, they translate well in a soul song. As a kid, my mom would tell me that [Eartha] didn't have to work. She sung in the choir and played organ and my mom told me that she was very strict just like my mom [laughs.]
Ewan McGregor plays Jesus and the devil in Rodrigo Garcia's 'Last Days in the Desert'
There are plenty of movies about Jesus, but "Last Days in the Desert" might have the most intriguing — or strangest — premise: use the same actor to portray both Jesus and Satan.
In "Last Days in the Desert," that actor is Ewan McGregor, who stars both as Jesus — wandering the desert for 40 days — and The Demon, Yeshua's devilish mirror. The movie was written and directed by Rodrigo García, the Colombian filmmaker who made “Albert Nobbs” and “Things You Can Tell Just By Looking at Her.” And "Last Days" is showing at the AFI Film Festival before hitting theaters next January.
When McGregor and García joined us at the Sundance Film Festival, they talked about the ways in which shooting in a real desert affected the movie and how they approached putting Jesus on the big screen.
Interview Highlights:
Ewan, how does the environment in which you filmed affect your performance or your state of mind while you're acting in this film?
McGregor: We were such a small unit and we had such a small footprint, and especially our first week, where we were shooting Yeshua's walking through the desert in different locations, we were moving quite a lot between the shots and between the set-ups. There was nowhere and nothing else to do.
There was no phone reception, there was nowhere to go other than just find a little spot in the desert and sit down and look at the sky and look at the landscape.And that's totally infused in the performance, I think. It's what I used to do when I was a little kid, and now we move so quickly in our modern lives and we don't have time to just sit around.
Last night, I was looking at a scene where I'm playing with some stones. I realized that's something I really enjoy — sitting, playing with stones or sticks, and just looking, thinking, and letting things bubble up from your subconscious. It's a really beautiful, relaxing thing, and I think when you're playing somebody like Jesus who's thoughtful and pensive, that was very helpful.
Writer-director Rodrigo García on the set of "Last Days in the Desert". Photo courtesy of Francois Duhamel.
Rodrigo, people who know the story of Jesus in the desert can interpret it however they want. Some people look at it as history, some view it as parable, some see it as myth, and there are many other possible interpretations. Did you have a main idea in your mind about what this story represented?
García: You cannot go into a story about Jesus without all the things that are a given — you know the context, you know the outcome, you know the destiny. I sort of freed myself in a couple of ways, by narrowing it down just to three days in his life that are completely out of the context of the Gospel, and also I only concentrated on the human side.
As a writer-director, you always have to ask yourself, If this was me, then what? Have you put yourself in that position? There's no point for a director to say, "Well, even if I was God, then what?" Although some directors do that. [laughs] So I avoided the divine side altogether, and I just dealt with the human.
Ewan, I think there are in fact more books written about Jesus than any person in the history of the world, and yet there probably aren't as many books about the Devil. So as you're preparing for both roles, is one more challenging than the other? In watching the film, there seems to be a certain sparkle in your eyes while you're playing the Devil that you maybe don't have when you're Jesus. Is that just the nature of a difference between the characters, or was one actually more enjoyable or easier to play?
McGregor: They became closer than I had imagined. I hadn't given the demon as much thought, it's true to say, going into the film. When you're approaching the start of a movie where you're playing Jesus, the Jesus part of your brain is being exercised more than anything else. [laughs]
It's quite a daunting proposition, so I hadn't really given the demon as much thought. But I'm quite glad, in a way, because if I had approached the demon in a bigger way or a more obvious "bad guy" way...I don't know, there's something terribly interesting about the fact that they're closer than you might imagine.
García: I think the way you played it, it does come out as a brother — his fallen brother. Two brothers, one striving to do good, and the other having fallen already. And I think that fraternal thing between them is one of the achievements of the performance.
McGregor: And you gave me incredible moments to play, where we see the demon's fragility, or his jealousy, or his pride. And there's a moment where we part at the end where there's disappointment in both sides. They've been walking through the desert together for quite a long time, and they're a sort of company for each other. It's quite bizarre.