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09 March 2009
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filmmaker
Fresh back from a whistle top promotional tour where he faced a grilling by hundreds of journalists, Simon Pegg stepped straight into his latest role – playing a celebrity obsessed magazine writer who has a terrible knack of upsetting everyone including the people he’s sent to interview. In How To Lose Friends And Alienate People, Pegg plays British hack Sidney Young who lands a highly coveted job on an upscale Manhattan based glossy called Sharps. But his dream of finding himself on the inside the glamorous world of premiers, parties and rubbing shoulders with beautiful starlets goes disastrously, hilariously wrong thanks to a series of spectacular gaffs.
“It was interesting because I started the film directly after doing a big block of press for Hot Fuzz so I had literally just been in contact with about 600 journalists,” says Pegg.
“So it was fascinating and funny and not as weird as you might think it was. I didn’t suddenly think ‘oh I’m on the other side of it now and now I understand them.’ I think journalists are individuals and I wouldn’t presume to say they are all the same.
How To Lose Friends And Alienate People is loosely based on British journalist Toby Young’s memoir of his time working on Vanity Fair magazine. But, as Pegg points out, although the book is the inspiration, the film is vastly different.
“The film is very much an adaptation of the book and I’m keen to stress that,” says Pegg. “The book doesn’t really lend itself to being a film in a sense, because it’s very anecdotal and it’s filled with huge tracts about philosophy and it’s very much a book and an enjoyable one, but in order to make it into a film Peter (Straughan, screenwriter) had to shape it as such so it is pretty different.”
I've been searching around trying to find a feed of the Oscars. Finally find an unofficial one on Justin.tv and arrive just as Heath Ledger's name is announced. There's wet eyes all over the place and for once it seems genuine.
Tho it seems more likely that it's the film's combination of internationalism and hope in the face of poverty - which chimes with both the economic mood and Obama's 'new era of international dialogue and intelligence' - than the film itself which is a little stereotyped and simplistic - and quite heavily criticised in India. Rumour has it Fox planned to send the film straight to video. Nevertheless, to see the country and her people again on the big screen, shot brilliantly, in a format that is accesible and entertaining to lots of people, and to know this is the Academy's film of the year does, ultimately, feel good and right. And Celedor backing or not, it's still a remarkable success for a film that was funded and produced by the UK yet never sets foot here.
As ever, there will be spoilers
This month Raindance brings you a free screening of Zebra Crossings. Zebra Crossings premiered in last years Raindance Film Festival and also won an award at the 2008 BIFAs.
In Anatomy Of A Reel, director Mark Tonderai and his key heads of department breakdown the first reel of the thriller Hush (Generalrelease: 13 March 2009) from idea to final cut. The reel will be pulled apartand looked at from the perspective of the Writer, Director, DOP, Composer andEditor in their singular effort to create a low budget suspense story with abig budget look. A must see event for anyone interested in the mechanics andart of filmmaking!
The 2009 Edinburgh International Film Festival is open for submissions. You can submit online through the EIFF website or download a form and mail it to them or submit through withoutabox.
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