Interviews Archives - Bright Wall/Dark Room

"Based on an actual lie.” That’s how Lulu Wang’s new film The Farewell starts out, before China-born, U.S.-raised Billi (Awkwafina) returns to Changchun as her family prepares to say goodbye to their matriarch Nai Nai, who’s been diagnosed with cancer. The one catch: Nai Nai doesn’t know she’s sick.

“Mad Men is smarter than the people who think they are smarter than Mad Men…”

Chad Perman·

Interviews Mad Men: The Final Season

An interview with Matt Zoller Seitz

“TV can be every bit as complex a medium as any novel…”

Chad Perman·

Interviews Mad Men: The Final Season

An interview with Alissa Wilkinson

“We Can Still Find Light”: An Interview with the Creators of Sing Sing

Justin Hairston·

Interviews

The creators behind Sing Sing—director Greg Kwedar, co-writer Clint Bentley, and producer Monique Walton—on telling stories, hard-won optimism, and the necessity of art.

“I’m Gonna Shout Action—When I Do, Just Be in Love”: An interview with Stephen Cone

Frank Falisi·

Interviews Issue 125: Chicago

"I think this is a thing that will not change in whatever I’m lucky enough to make in the future: a constant prioritizing of the pleasure principle. I lament the moving away from sensual pleasures in cinema."

Charm City Director Marilyn Ness on Avoiding Sensationalism and How Women Are Shaping Documentary Films

Eileen G'Sell·

Interviews

"It’s a super testosteroney movie—a bunch of men, a lot of violence, the cops are dudes, the guys in the neighborhoods are dudes. But no one was looking at this with empathy, like, “What does it mean to be a human being living in this space?” To me that was a very female gaze, though the movie wasn’t about women."

Director Susanna Nicchiarelli on the set of NICO, 1988

Nico, 1988 Director Susanna Nicchiarelli on Fame and the Final Days of the Cold War

Eileen G'Sell·

Interviews

"The fact is that these final years of Nico’s life were arguably the best years because she was much more in control, she was happy, and she had her band."

One Child Nation Directors Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang on Children, Choice, and the Chinese “Propaganda Machine”

Eileen G'Sell·

Interviews

"You know how, in therapy, you realize something was the cause of something else? This film was like natural therapy for me. I started thinking, 'What else do I remember about the one-child policy, and how did it affect me?'"

Always Trying to Get Beyond the Veil: An Interview with Abel Ferrara

Travis Woods·

Interviews Issue 142: Teachers

"You got to move forward because you can't change the past. You can only live in the present. And you just try to make it as full and bright and be as righteous as you can be. But it's rough, man. You know, we're human beings and we have a lot of temptation."

An Interview with Allison Janney

Chad Perman·

Interviews Issue 41: Margaret

"I’ve gotten better at letting it go, but something like that scene sort of stays with you for a bit. It’s hard to shake that off after the work is done. It definitely involved a really long hot shower and maybe a bath and a martini or something."

An Interview with J. Smith-Cameron

Chad Perman·

Interviews Issue 41: Margaret

"I find Joan's behavior embarrassingly human but endearing. As a middle-aged woman who is now a mother of a teenage girl myself, I think it's a strikingly accurate character-relationship dynamic."

An interview with John DeMarsico

Frank Falisi·

Interviews

On the first day of February, a touch early to smell the Spring Training hot dogs but late enough not to worry about wanting it, I spoke to John DeMarsico—the New York Mets Game Director at SNY—about the cinema inside of baseball and the baseball inside of everything else.