"I think all of my characters, even Kate in 45 Years, are the same. They are isolated people—and they are outsiders."
"People are really complicated–even if they make mistakes, there's always some redeeming quality there. You try to inject something familiar into them."
Zosha Millman sits down with writer/director Bo Burnham and star Elsie Fisher to discuss Eighth Grade, why middle schoolers care so much about everything, and why it was important to light the film with natural cellphone brightness.
"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."
"In the real world, not the movie world, there was just a lot of support amongst all the girls on set."
"In my experience, human beings are the same. We laugh like each other, we fall in love like each other, we get sad like each other, we have the same emotions in the same conditions everywhere."
"I’ve done a lot of other things, but when I look back on my work… [my work with Bergman was] probably what gave me most life. Because I was so alive, and I was trusted so much."
"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."
"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.
"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?'"
"Genius is a word that’s thrown around a lot, but I think whatever it means, if Elaine May is not a brilliant improviser, nobody is. If Elaine May is not a brilliant actress, nobody is. If she’s not a brilliant writer, nobody is. If she’s not a brilliant director, nobody is. So whatever that word means, you can apply it to her in four different categories at least, and probably more."
Actress and director Lee Grant reflects on her 70 year career in Hollywood.