She isn’t bidding farewell to her acting career nor disavowing her past work, though she sees some of it in a new light. Like her “Booksmart” characters, Wilde is enjoying her own newfound freedom she is realizing that “Booksmart” might finally be the movie that provides the filmmaking experience she’s always wanted. Variety wrote in its review, “Not since ‘Superbad’ has a high school comedy so perfectly nailed how exhilarating it feels to act out at that age,” adding, “In this year’s class of first-time feature directors, Wilde handily earns the title of Most Likely to Succeed.” The movie was received enthusiastically when it made its debut at South By Southwest in March. It is also, pointedly, a story about not evaluating people on their appearances. Where many actors-turned-directors make debut movies that are eye-rollingly political or pretentious, “Booksmart” would love to be a latter-day “Dazed and Confused” or “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” - a celebration of adolescence, from a decidedly female perspective. The movie, which opens May 24, is a bawdy, unapologetically raucous comedy about two studious friends (played by Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever) trying to make the most of the last night before high school graduation. “Booksmart,” at a quick glance, might not seem like the kind of film that would stir up defiant feelings. “It grosses me out to acknowledge it, but I’ve been thinking a lot about it.” “It is remarkable that I am 35 years old and this is the first job I’ve ever had that wasn’t entirely dependent on and connected to my looks,” she said. Her new movie, “Booksmart,” would be special enough to her because it is her directorial debut, but Wilde said it held further value. But if she once believed it was her responsibility to embody “everyone’s version of a perfect woman,” she said she had learned, “I don’t have to carry that.” Wilde has a résumé that is rife with simmering, sexualized supporting roles on TV melodramas (“The O.C.,” “House,” “Vinyl”) and in not-quite-blockbuster movies (“Tron: Legacy,” “Cowboys & Aliens”) - often reflections of how others saw her rather than how she saw herself. And when they nailed it, everybody erupted into applause, and there were tears, tears, tears. And Mason Gooding had never danced before in his life. It was an effort on behalf of the entire crew together, and no one more than the actors themselves, who learned this intense choreography designed by Denna Thomsen. There was also the added complication of the lighting design being cued by the actors’ choreography. Our Steadicam operator, Chris Haarhoff, who had shot “Birdman,” so I knew he could handle long, extended Steadicam shots, shot this in one shot that would take us through the entire house. In order to achieve it, it took an incredible amount of collaboration between all departments. And I wanted to pay homage to the great films of the 1940s and ‘50s in Hollywood that use dance. The most interesting way to use the language of filmmaking is to illustrate, cinematically, something emotional about a character that we can’t see on the surface, that we can’t explain with words. And what follows is a fantasy that reveals that Molly has been the most romantic person in the room this entire film. Molly, played by Beanie Feldstein, spots Nick, played by Mason Gooding. I’m Olivia Wilde, director of “Booksmart.” So at this moment in the film, the girls have just reached the party, and it’s sort of like Dorothy arriving in Oz. Transcript ‘Booksmart’ | Anatomy of a Scene The director Olivia Wilde narrates a sequence from her film.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |