Producer Jessica Elbaum and writer-director Leslye Headland team up for "Sleeping With Other People"; Apple introduces new products, but you still can't stream Amazon shows through Apple TV; a new play examines the complicated relationship between iconic L.A. architects Rudolph Schindler and Richard Neutra.
The rom-com 'Sleeping With Other People' uses sex as a subject, not a punchline
In the new rom-com "Sleeping With Other People," Lainey and Jake (played by Alison Brie and Jason Sudeikis) attempt to squash their mutual attraction to forge a platonic friendship.
Not the easiest thing to do for two people reunited by happenstance 12 years after a one-night stand.
“Sleeping with Other People” is produced by the company Gloria Sanchez -- that’s the women’s division of Will Ferrell and Adam McKay’s company, Gary Sanchez.
Producer Jessica Elbaum is heading this enterprise. She wants to offer an answer to the continuing dilemma of gender inequity in Hollywood, and “Sleeping with Other People,” directed and written by Leslye Headland, is their first release.
When the movie premiered earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival we caught up with Headland and Elbaum between screenings.
Interview Highlights:
Many of the films screened at Sundance this year, especially the comedies, have explicit sexual themes. Is it something in the water?
Leslye Headland: I think that in comedy, sex has become more and more a subject as opposed to just a punchline. At least for me, it's becoming more and more of a part of a conversation. Especially for women filmmakers like Lena Dunham and Desiree Akhavan, they're talking about being on the spectrum, they're talking about what it's like to be messy. "Sleeping With Other People" is very different because it's about falling in love in your 30s when you actually already have all of your emotional baggage and your coupons for mistakes have been used up...but I do think for female filmmakers and writers this is a little bit of a domain that we're very interested in exploring. Not that male filmmakers don't, but I think it's something we feel like we would like to have a say on exactly what our experiences have been.
This film also has a very particular view of the difference between sex and nudity
LH: Yes. Absolutely. Look, I think there are incredible sex scenes that have nudity in them that are very astounding. There are definitely sex scenes that have that. For me, nudity takes me a little out of the story and when I see an actor nude I think about the actor just very briefly. Even if it's just for a split second, I think, "oh, the actor is naked." That's a blip I never want my audience to have. I think in order to believe they're falling in love, you absolutely have to believe that Jake and Lainey are real people and not played by actors.
Both this movie and "Bachelorette" are very funny movies and yet they're also about a very personal kind of pain that people are trying to work out. Do you think they have that unifying theme?
Jessica Elbaum: For me, every time that I've read something that Leslye's written, and we've now worked together three times, I have this chair that I read everything that she writes and it's a weird ritual that I have. I see it so clearly because I also related to it and she just writes these real deep characters.
When John Cooper, the director of Sundance, introduced you he talked about how nice but rare it was for women directors to come back to the festival. You are here, but you're also here with Gloria Sanchez Productions, the spinoff of Adam McKay and Will Ferrell's company Gary Sanchez. Talk a little bit about Gloria Sanchez and what that means to women filmmakers.
LH: I can speak to my personal experience, and I even said this to Jess before leaving the screening, so many girls need you, specifically. Why not just make movies by filmmakers, why have a specific brand and a place for those women to come and a development plan that specifically is geared toward that? Look at the numbers, look at the percentages. Look at how dire it is. We need help. It is not easy out there, it is just not easy to go in there and pitch something, especially something that is sexually explicit, something that is pushing the envelope that's starting a conversation to get top-line actors to go there and to trust the script. Jess is the one that's really talking to their people and talking with them on a regular basis. I'm in prep and doing all of my putting out fires and herding cats and it's like we absolutely need that extra level of support. People will look at it, and not just from a brand level, but look there's a place that I can go to send my material...Jess has produced my films and they are my films, you're not looking at something that I was told to recut, you're not looking at something that I was forced to compromise on. Those are my movies. I may not technically have final cut, because women are not allowed to direct films, but she has protected me to literally that level
JE: For me when I started it of course I felt very strongly, the facts and figures you cannot fight them. I did have a moment like, wow are people going to have a reaction like it's fine everybody's making stuff women are working, but no actually they're not. I can't tell you how many times I've pitched and they're like, "We love it, but we have our female comedy or we have our female show." So nothing's changing, nobody's doing anything to change it. Also to be clear, by creating a place for female writers, directors, filmmakers, but also I want to make stuff with strong female characters, so if a man would write that and come to me and it had a great female character, I'd want to make it because I can't tell you how many actresses we talk to that are just so sick of playing the best friend or the sister. This company was started out of pure frustration just to be very clear.
'The Princes of Kings Road': a play about two titans of LA architecture
In a story that proves real life is often stranger than anything Hollywood could invent, consider the relationship between architects Richard Neutra and Rudolph Schindler.
They were college friends in Austria who reunited in 1925 in Los Angeles where they would design buildings that are considered masterworks of modern architecture.
They lived together here with their wives in Schindler's famous house on Kings Road in West Hollywood. A falling out destroyed their relationship, only to see it rekindled as fate brought both men together decades later in a hospital room.
That story is now the basis for a new play, "The Princes of Kings Road." Actors John Nielsen and Ray Xifo portray the two elderly architects thrown together by fate. They spend most of the play on stage in hospital beds.
"We only have to block with our heads and arms," says Nielsen during a break from rehearsal.
"It’s a wonderful challenge — I’m in bed, how do I make it work?" adds Xifo, before Nielsen chimes back in: “He’s Italian, I’m from Brooklyn, so we speak with our hands and arms anyway.”
Writer-director Tom Lazarus came up with the idea based on one small anecdote from a TV documentary: "It mentioned that Schindler and Neutra had a 23-year gap in their relationship. They went from friends, to partners, then bitterly estranged. And then, by coincidence, Schindler lay dying and they wheel Neutra in, and I said to my wife, 'That’s a play.'"
Schindler and Neutra covered Los Angeles with their Modernist designs, primarily working between the 1920s and '60s. The house Schindler built that these two Austrian immigrants shared for many years was once voted "The Best House of All Time" by an L.A. Times survey of local architects. And it’s at that Kings Road enclave where things got interesting. In their bohemian, partner-swapping era, Neutra was the observer, Schindler the instigator — all great stuff for any playwright.
“Schindler’s wife was very modern,” says Lazarus, "the guiding light to the hijinks. She believed in free love. Schindler was a womanizer, and I had to control myself as a writer to not spend all my time there, because it was so commercial and so wonderful.”
And that’s when coincidence again stepped into this story. As Lazarus was workshopping the script, Neutra’s son — an architect himself — happened to get wind of the project.
“Five minutes before curtain, one of the actors came to me and said, 'Dion Neutra is outside and wants to talk to you.' And my heart leaped out of my chest. He and his wife came in and sat in the first row, and at the end, I walked over to him and he said, 'You got it amazingly right.'"
It worked out so well that Dion Neutra offered up one of his father’s building to stage the play. So on September 12th, the story of two best friends who couldn’t have been more different will see its debut at the Neutra Institute and Museum of Silverlake.
"The Princes of Kings Road" runs from Sept. 12 to Oct. 4. For more information, visit www.ThePrincesOfKingsRoad.com.
Apple unveils new TV set-top box, but is it really 'the future of television?'
Apple CEO Tim Cook on Tuesday unveiled the company's new products, including the iPad Pro, the iPhone 6s, and the possibly game-changing Apple TV, described by Cook as "a new foundation for television."
Dawn Chmielewski is a senior editor at Re/Code, and when she joined us after just leaving the packed Apple presentation in San Francisco, we asked her about some of the features of the new and improved Apple TV, as well as her thoughts on Apple TV's role in ushering in the future of television.
Interview Highlights:
Tim Cook said that technology, like phones, has improved throughout the years, yet television has been stagnant. So what is Apple TV going to do to change the TV experience?
Good question. Let's face it — we've all been waiting for Apple to actually create a new television set, one with a new interface and perhaps a streamlined experience. We'll have to wait a bit longer to get an actual TV in the living room, but what Apple did announce was a new version of its set-top box, its device that streams video to the television set. And this device has been dramatically improved in several ways.
The Apple TV remote is actually a departure from the universal remote you may be familiar with — there are no numbers on the remote. Rather, it has a touch-sensitive panel that allows you to navigate your programming options with swipes, much like you might use the same sorts of gestures on other Apple devices. It also employs Siri, Apple's intelligent assistant, so you can speak to the remote to call up programming. It's a different and simpler interface for consumers.
Can I say to the remote, "What did she just say?" Will the TV back up 10 seconds?
Exactly, and it'll add captioning. The other element that has changed with this version of the set-top box is that Apple will bring apps to the television set. Tim Cook was saying that we're already using apps to view video on our mobile devices, like YouTube apps or Netflix apps to watch content, and what this update does is bring that same sort of interface to the TV.
So not only will I be able to access HBO Go or Netflix, but I'll also now be able to play games on my TV, the casual games that Nintendo used to be known for and even some console games that I might have found on the XBox or Playstation.
So you're basically describing a giant iPad where I can play all my games or I can look up menus on Epicurious — it's basically a living room version of what we have in our pockets.
Precisely. Apple is trying to play to its strength and to bring people into its very familiar ecosystem. Anyone who's used an iPhone or iPad will recognize the interface, and the interesting thing is that it sets the table for what's next for Apple.
We know that Apple is in discussions with the networks about bringing together a package of traditional broadcast content. They're not there yet, and they probably won't be by the end of this year, but this fills the content gap until Apple can develop a fuller programming offering.
I'm curious about Amazon. Amazon's not only a purveyor of lots of goods, but they're also now a purveyor of television. Do we know whether or not Amazon will be a part of the future of Apple TV?
We don't. Amazon was the one notable omission from Tim Cook's presentation today. He talked about a number of other video services such as Netflix, HBO Go and Hulu, but there was no mention of Amazon.
The new Apple TV will go on sale in October at two different price points, $149 for the 32gb model and $199 for the 64gb model. Do you think the device is actually going to influence and change the way people watch TV?
I think that's a tall order. We've already evolved so dramatically in how we watch TV — we've seen things like TiVo and other digital video recorders really changing the way we experience live TV, and perhaps this is something that brings us a step further.