Author Archives: silviabizio

Neil Patrick Harris speaks with the HFPA

Actor Neil Patrick Harris talks about his love of magic.

Rupert Grint speaks with the HFPA

Actor Rupert Grint talks about the end of the Harry Potter series.

Mary J Blige speaks to the HFPA

Mary J Blige talks about her inspiration to write a song for the film The Help.

Emma Stone speaks with the HFPA

Emma Stone talks about filming her new movie on location in Mississippi.

Vera Farmiga speaks with the HFPA

Actress Vera Farmiga talks about directing her first feature film.

Gabrielle Donnelly’s fifth novel, THE LITTLE WOMEN LETTERS

Congratulations to HFPA member Gabrielle Donnelly on the success of her fifth novel, THE LITTLE WOMEN LETTERS, which was published on June 7 by the Touchstone imprint of Simon & Schuster.

THE LITTLE WOMEN LETTERS, a modern day homage, set in contemporary London, to Louisa May Alcott’s beloved classic LITTLE WOMEN, is hitting best seller lists in Britain and America alike and winning overwhelmingly enthusiastic reviews from both print outlets and blogs, with THE WASHINGTON POST  declaring it “could be just the perfect pool-side read” (June 18) and a chorus of praise on goodreads hailing it as “captivating,” “FANTASTIC!” (capitals and screamer the reviewer’s own) and “a joy.”

Gabrielle Donnelly was born and brought up in London and has lived in Los Angeles since 1980.  As well as writing novels, she contributes to The Daily Mail, Hello!, Saga, and Women’s Weekly. She has been a member of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association since 1984.

Brendan Gleason speaks with the HFPA

Actor Brendan Gleeson recalls a personal encounter with the law…

TOM HANKS speaks with the HFPA

Tom Hanks tells us what he would study if he went back to school.

PETER FALK – AN APPRECIATION

By Philip Berk

The death of actor Peter Falk leaves a huge void in the film community.

Although best known for playing Columbo on television (for which he won a Golden Globe), members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association will remember him most for his beguiling wit.

For the worldwide popularity of Columbo, he had an explanation. “Like all the great detectives, the character himself is interesting.  Elaine May once compared Columbo to Sherlock Holmes, saying Columbo was an ass-backwards Sherlock Holmes, meaning Holmes was tall, Columbo short.  Holmes had a long neck, Columbo no neck. Holmes smokes an expensive Meerschaum pipe, Columbo 25 cent cigars. Holmes is articulate, Columbo is still working on his English. What they have in common is an insatiable curiosity, and in that sense, they are like children, because what you and I take for granted, they find interesting. They’re both obsessors, obsessed with getting to the answer, totally in love with what they do.  Can you imagine Columbo ever killing time?”

How attached was he to the character of Columbo?  “He means a great deal to me.  He changed my life, made me a lot of dough.  As I’ve said a number of times, I don’t think God designed anyone to be recognized by three billion people, but it’s true.  Can you imagine 3 billion people know who you are?  And you don’t know any of them. This is very strange.”

Asked why Columbo is so proficient, he has a ready explanation.  “He doesn’t talk too much.  If he knows something, he doesn’t blab it right away.   He keeps it to himself.  Most people when they know something, they can’t wait to open their mouths. Out it comes. You never see Columbo share his information with other cops.  He doesn’t trust them; he’s Italian that way.  He don’t trust.  Later on is time enough.  He keeps it to himself.”

Falk compares a good director with Columbo.  “He doesn’t shoot off his mouth. The best directors wait a long time before they start talking.  First they want to see.  The best directors that I’ve worked with, they pick their spots before they open their mouths.  They first look at the strength of the actor and work on that, rather than deciding ahead of time where they’re going to push him.”

One of the highlights of Falk’s career was his role in Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire playing himself.  Here’s how he described that experience:  “With Wim, you can hardly hear when he talks.  And if you did, you wouldn’t understand it, so it doesn’t make any difference.  Wim is in his own world, wandering around, thinking. Most of the time, he is saying ‘I’m not sure. I don’t know.’  But strangely enough, he has what I think is the essential quality for a director – he inspires confidence by being so comfortable with his uncertainty.  He has no compunction about saying ‘I don’t know.   I just don’t know…’  He always enumerates all his options.  ‘I could do this.  I could do that.’  He’ll think and think, and then he’ll say he won’t be able to sleep.  But underneath he’s very confident.  He told me, ‘Whenever I have a script, I want to rip it up.  I feel I’m a prisoner of the script. It imposes boundaries.  It tells me I have to stay here.  If I see something else, I can’t do it. I want to burst out of that script. On Wings I have no script, so every night when I go to bed what do I do, I pray to God, ‘If I only had a script.’”

Talking about costumes, Falk spoke about Columbo’s trenchcoat.  “A costume is very important. Some mystical thing happens when you get the right costume.  I don’t know why.”  He segues into a story of the Wings costume.  “When I went over to Berlin to do Wings of Desire, it was a different experience.  On other pictures you have something to worry about because you have a script.  But if you don’t have a script, what’s there to worry about?  Nothing.  Well, I found something to worry about — my costume.  When Wim makes a movie he reminds me of Cassavetes.  He would always meet at night, 3 o’clock in the morning, in a bar somewhere.  He never met in an office, and you always got messages, ‘I’ll meet you here,’ and then another message would come, ‘No it’ll be an hour later, and it’ll be in the other part of town.’  Everything was done in the middle of making the movie.

“Any rate, I went to get the costume.  I hadn’t seen Wim, so I brought it over to the hotel and waited for him. When he got there, I started telling him the toughest thing is to find a hat, a hat that you look good in, that fits your face, the brim is not too big, the top of the brim, the boop, the bup, everything.  So while I was putting it on, saying how good it looks from the front, that like this it looks like I’m going to the opera, like that I look like a Rabbi, when I got done, he said, ‘I don’t know about the costume, but the scene I could use in the film, and he did.”

Besides Falk’s sense of humor, there was his self deprecating candor.  Asked about his published drawings, he readily admitted, “There’s a lot of bogus art around, and a lot of craziness about celebrities.  I’m not complaining, but I don’t know if I’m entirely comfortable with it.  Believe me, if you had drawn it, it wouldn’t be published.”

On a lighter note, he loved to joke about his tempestuous (but loving) marriage. “My wife’s Italian.  You know most women don’t want to tell their ages, right?  They lie about it.  My wife won’t tell the age of her dog.  If people stop her on the street and ask her the dog’s age, she makes it five years younger.  That’s only for the female dogs.  The males she tells the truth right away.”

What made the marriage work?  “Well, you know, my wife and I decide to get divorced every three years.  One of the problems of getting a divorce is you’ve got to be in sync.  If it’s out of whack, it’s hard to get a divorce.  As I once said, if we all pull together, we can make this divorce work.”

R.I.P. Peter Falk.  You will surely be missed.

A PLACE IN THE SUN

By Jorge Camara

A Place in the Sun, the 1952 winner of the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Drama was, and still is, one of Hollywood’s most successful conversions from literature to screen.

Adapted by Michael Wilson and Harry Brown from Theodore Dreiser’s masterpiece, “An American Tragedy,” carefully directed by George Stevens, and starring Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor at the pinnacle of their youth and beauty, the film may have put more emphasis on the romantic elements than in the class conflicts and sociological aspects of the story. Nevertheless, it was a resounding triumph both with critics and audiences. The extreme close-up of the long kiss between the stars remains a classic moment in American cinema.

Clift plays the poor relation laboring in his uncle’s factory, desperate to break into high society.  He falls in love with the rich and glamorous Taylor and plots to get rid of his pregnant girlfriend, played by Shelley Winters.  Winters, a sexpot at the time, deglamourized herself to great effect, impressing as the homely and plain woman who derails the relationship of the couple.

Reports are that Taylor fell hopelessly in love with Clift during the production of the film, a relationship that was not to be, but she remained a loyal friend to the tormented actor, insisting, when he was uninsurable, to have him as her co-star in Suddenly Last Summer eight years later.

This was not the first attempt to bring “An American Tragedy” to the screen. In 1931 Josef von Sternberg directed Phillips Holmes, Sylvia Sidney and Frances Dee in a version that used the book’s title.  The picture was curiously advertised as “a drama that happens around you everyday when the wild life of impetuous youth burns away age-old barriers.”  This was one of the rare cases where the remake turned out better than the original.

A PLACE IN THE SUN – trailer