AND NOW RADIOMAN:THE MOVIE
A familiar figure to Hollywood Foreign Press members, Radioman is the star of a documentary movie which will be screened at the London Film Festival in October. It is the story of an extraordinary eccentric, a homeless man whose unparalleled obsession with the movies has taken him from sleeping on the streets to becoming a New York movie legend with over 100 small film roles to his name.
Radioman (so called because of the trademark boombox radio he hangs around his neck) spends his day and nights cycling around the city from one movie set to another, hanging out with the cast and crew between takes and then moving on to wait until the early hours of the morning outside premieres and after-parties for the same people he has just spent the day with. The stars, filmmakers and crew are the closest thing he has to a family and he cherishes he time he can spend with them even if it often means waiting for seven hours in the freezing cold.
Featuring interviews with celebrities who know him the Radioman documentary gives the audience a look behind the scenes of showbusiness—paparazzi, autograph hunters, premieres and film shoots, all seen through the eyes of a self-confessed New York street bum.
On a recent trip to New York we caught up with Radioman where he was waiting for Jessica Alba outside the Trump Soho Hotel and planning his trip to London. “I’ll be there for the premiere of the movie but I won’t stay more than a couple of days,” he told us. “I’ve got things to do in New York.”
HFPA VISIT COMIC-CON FOR THE TWILIGHT SAGA
The cast (left) of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2, the last of the blockbuster movies based on Stephanie Meyers popular Twilight books, took time off from meeting fans at the Comi-Con convention in San Diego to recall for HFPA members their mixed feelings about the end of what was a life- changing experience for them all.
Although everyone expressed a kinship with cast mates that they felt would endure beyond the filming itself, Robert Pattinson (Edward), lamented, “Although every single one of them is like my oldest friend in America, we can’t really hang out with the whole Twilight cast because it looks like you’re trying to do an event.”
They were all relieved to escape the continuous cold and rain of the location filming . “At the end we were shooting nights for weeks and weeks, and we all just ran away,” said Pattinson.
Breaking Dawn—Part 2 will be released on November 16.
Apart from the stars who were there to promote their movies, there were plenty of sights to be seen at this year’s Comi-Con as teams of people in franchise and bizarre costumes trolled the streets (left). A third of the crowd comes to be seen, another third comes to photograph the circus and use the opportunity to promote their product, and the final third are hardcore fans hoping for an up-close and personal with their favorite star. Police presence is upped, especially after the death of a Twilight fan, 53 year old Gisela Gagliardi, while crossing an intersection. Police cars seemed to be on every block, and security personnel stood out from the throngs . –Margaret Gardiner
DIANE KEATON: A LOVE LETTER TO WOODY ALLEN
For forty years the HFPA has audio- taped famous actors and actresses. The world’s largest collection of its kind is now in the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences Library. The audios are fascinating. To stars, our HFPA journalists are family; they banter with them and speak openly and frankly about themselves and their artistry.
I’ve known Woody all my adult life, and clearly I love him. He’s hilarious and brilliant. What can I say? There are few people you get to know that well in life. That’s why I feel privileged to be in that rarified world of people who’re old news. I’ve been around forever; I’m someone he’s known forever. He can’t get rid of me. I’ll always be his friend, and that’s never going to go away.
Is he distracted by adverse publicity? He’s never distracted when he works. After all, how many years has he been doing it? Thirty? He’s very disciplined. I believe that if you lean on your disciplines, they’ll help get you through life.
It’s true of a lot of people. Francis Coppola had a horrible tragedy when his son was killed, but he continued to work. I’ve never known anyone to become hysterical while working as a director. It’s just too much responsibility. You don’t have time to let your personal life interfere.
When I went back to do Woody’s movie Manhattan Murder Mystery after a very long period of not having worked with him, I realized what a truly remarkable film maker he is.
There’s nobody like him in the world. And he’s deceptive, because a lot of the time you feel like you’re not even being directed.
People are excited to work with him because obviously he’s one of the greatest film makers America’s ever produced. Everybody wants to be in a quality product, and they trust him, so he’s done very well with actors.
Not that he’s easy to work with. The process is difficult,the expectations are very high, and it can be very nerve -wracking. After ten years, of course, I was anxious, very nervous. It’s like going back and seeing your family again.
But after a week it felt like old times.
—–Jack Tewksbury
HFPA VISITS POLITICAL ANIMALS SET
A group of HFPA journalists had the opportunity to visit the set of the USA Network’s new political drama POLITICAL ANIMALS, a series starring Sigourney Weaver which is set in Washington D.C. but actually filmed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Weaver plays a former First Lady who, after having lost her own bid for the US presidency now finds herself working as Secretary of State for her formal election rival, a storyline which will no doubt lead to comparisons with a recent US president and his First Lady.
“The series is full of rich characters ,” Weaver told the HFPA members, who also talked with cast members Carla Gugino, Ciaran Hinds, James Wolk and Sebastian Stan.
Ellen Burstyn and Brittany Ishibashi also star.
MARTIN SCORSESE ON THE MAFIA
For forty years the HFPA has audio- taped famous and celebrated actors and actresses. The world’s largest collection of its kind is now in the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences Li brary.
The audios are fascinating. To veteran stars, our HFPA journalists are family; they banter with them and they speak openly and frankly about themselves and their artistry.
I grew up in a neighborhood like the one we see in my film GoodFellas. Except it was a tenement in Manhattan, not in Queens. I was one of the kids playing in thestreet. Some people were nicer to us, others were nastier, but we grew to know them as people first. They used Irish and English nicknames, nothing to do with Italian names, like Don.
I started to be aware that certain people were treated differently. You could gather how powerful they were by the way people moved around them. They sat quietly but you could feel the presence of power emanating from them.
Later on we thought that the ones who were boisterous, wore loud clothes, and were more openly brutal, were the wiseguys. But we found out later that it’s the quieter ones, who control things from the backrooms of coffee shops, who are the real GoodFellas.
And in the area where I grew up, many of the young boys aspired to become gangsters like them — or, like me, to be priests. Our heroes were either one or the other.
In America there are twenty million Italian-Americans, among them Supreme Court justices, governors, senators, doctors, scientists. Of the twenty million, maybe only four thousand of these are GoodFellas, organized crime members, according to the FBI. So it’s a very small aspect of the community.
We can argue about the extent of the phenomenon, about the constant portrayal of them in books and films, but we cannot deny their existence. Twenty years ago there was an attempt to deny it completely, but it failed.
—-Edited by Jack Tewkesbury
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