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Joined: Mar 2009 Gender: Female Posts: 176 Location: Forestville, MD
Re: Less Than Zero « Result #1 Today at 4:48am »
For those of you in the USA who get the cable channel, Bravo, Less Than Zero will be shown on Dec. 2 at 10AM ET. It's been awhile since I rented it and I'm going to take another look at it focusing on the acting rather than the sleazy character James plays. Since it's TV you can be sure there will be some deleted scenes, especially one involving ice cubes. Oh, well.
"He's honest to a fault -- and what I mean by that is he's honest when he's lying. He's very honest with the truth, or the lack thereof, in his life. Really, he's quite blatant when he's being deceptive." - James Spader
Joined: Sept 2007 Gender: Female Posts: 818 Location: UK
Re: Race - Reviews « Result #3 Yesterday at 7:14am »
When someone's retinas have been stretched by years of short-sightedness it can take a long time before the after-effects of a flash disappear entirely. I'm not sure why exactly but I know from personal experience that it happens.
James doesn't look as though he's interacting much with the photographer in these shots. Maybe he had his mind on the play.
You can only **** in so many ways you know. If I'm able to find a film that plays with some of that, then I like it. I'm game, always game. (James Spader interview)
I've always believed life should come with one free do-over. - Alan Shore
Joined: Dec 2004 Gender: Female Posts: 740
Re: Race - Reviews « Result #4 on Nov 28, 2009, 11:31pm »
Some interesting comments from the photographer of a recent JS photo shoot. None of the pictures strike me as impressive, but what's a guy to do when his subject isn't willing to give him much expression? You know, I can't recall a picture taken at a photo shoot where he smiles. I wonder what's with that, he has such a gorgeous smile.
Last week I received a New York Times assignment to shoot a portrait James Spader for an article about his role on Broadway in a new David Mamet play called "Race". The brief shoot took place at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in mid-town and was another one of those “set-up in advance and bang out a handful of frames with the talent” quickies.
I knew James Spader primarily from his Boston Legal television show in which he starred opposite William Shatner, but I've also seen a few movies where he plays eccentric characters, so I had no idea what he'd be like in real life. I found him to be one of the kindest and most willing celebrities to shoot with. I did have trouble trying to get much expression from him, but never the less I feel we had a very successful shoot.
For this particular shoot I met up with the play's publicist who showed me around the theater, back rooms, basement, dressing rooms and I decided to choose the basement and a stairwell as the locations. With the help of my good pal and assistant, Noah Gilbert, I took some lighting tests and waited for Mr. Spader to arrive.
Once James arrived for the shoot it was very obvious he was going to be very easy to work with. When I shoot these celebrity assignments, I often bring a handful of lighting set-ups to get a variety of portrait options for my editor. I decided to bang out a few ring-light portraits while I had him near a brick wall...the first flash surprised him because of the brightness of the ring-light. At first I thought he was upset, but he quickly laughed it off and said, "It's ok, I can handle the first act tonight seeing rings of light....anything for a good picture."
Also, during the shoot another actor in the play came and pulled James away for a few minutes. Afterward James apologized explaining that he insists the entire cast gets weekly B-12 vitamin shots administered by his doctor to keep the cast healthy, and that was what the interruption was about. Smart idea considering the winter season and all the germs the playgoers must bring in each night. You have to be healthy to perform on Broadway.
Interesting fact I learned from James. As we were walking down to the basement to take a few more portraits, we passed an old poster for a play from nearly a half-century ago. On it was the profile of a woman and he mentioned how uncanny the resemblance was to Drew Barrymore. It took me a moment to put together that the woman in the poster was actually Ethel Barrymore, Drew Barrymore’s great-aunt, for whom the theater was named. Fancy that!
I take films for pretty selfish reasons. I mean I don't take them for how they might end up. I take them for how they'll be to make. - James Spader For Boston Legal transcripts go to http://boston-legal.org/episodes.shtml#transcripts
"He's honest to a fault -- and what I mean by that is he's honest when he's lying. He's very honest with the truth, or the lack thereof, in his life. Really, he's quite blatant when he's being deceptive." - James Spader
"I'm not sure what attracted me to Mac," says the 27 year old with Mr. Spader. "I keep trying to come up with some answers that make sense. I suppose I responded to what his life is all about. I like what happens to the characters in the story. And I thought it would be sort of interesting to fall in love with Susan." The way in which these characters fall in love grows of several graphic sexual scenes between Nora and Max, who has been celibate for two years following the tragic death of his young wife. In the first of these scenes, Nora literally attacks Max sexually while he's asleep on her living room floor. "Although Ms. Sarandon and Mr. Spader had never met before filming began here in late October, it is not unusual for them to walk onto the set holding hands like a couple of old high school chums. Each speaks highly of the other's abilities. For the eight-week shoot, both brought their families to St. Louis, including infant sons born only a few months apart. "Sometime when we finish the sex scenes at the end of the day, Jimmy will say, 'OK, now it's time to go back to the kids.'" Adds Ms. Sarandon."
I have to wonder how the Mrs. felt about all the hand holding? He's also been quoted as saying that he fell in love with Susan's charactor during filming. How far apart is Susan and Nora really,hmmmm?
I take films for pretty selfish reasons. I mean I don't take them for how they might end up. I take them for how they'll be to make. - James Spader For Boston Legal transcripts go to http://boston-legal.org/episodes.shtml#transcripts
Great review Imamess. As you say the writer did his research and came up with something that provides fresh insights into JS's acting approach. Perhaps his appearing on stage will attract more thoughtful reviews of his work. I can't wait!
Regarding the research, I'm curious whether it was done by perusing old articles, or whether he actually contacted Susan Sarandon, Holly Hunter and Maggie Gyllenhaal for those comments. For me it was interesting to read those comments in the context of JS preparing for his roles.
I tried to look for articles here on this board where MG talks about the box of chocolate and I may have this wrong but I seem to remember a sense of puzzlement on her part and her wondering if he had been toying with her. Yet, in her comment here, she seems to make a very clear connection to his giving her the chocolates and "an intense sexy scene" they were going to shoot.
I take films for pretty selfish reasons. I mean I don't take them for how they might end up. I take them for how they'll be to make. - James Spader For Boston Legal transcripts go to http://boston-legal.org/episodes.shtml#transcripts
You can only **** in so many ways you know. If I'm able to find a film that plays with some of that, then I like it. I'm game, always game. (James Spader interview)
Joined: Apr 2009 Gender: Female Posts: 12 Location: UK
Re: Race - Reviews « Result #10 on Nov 26, 2009, 2:58pm »
Great review Imamess. As you say the writer did his research and came up with something that provides fresh insights into JS's acting approach. Perhaps his appearing on stage will attract more thoughtful reviews of his work. I can't wait!
Meeting my Spader sisters was great, sorry we did not organize things a bit better (I suck at organizing). If we ever do this again it would be nice to plan to meet over dinner, drinks or sightseeing. Rather than just doing things on the fly. The play was intense, the company was great, and being kept warm by James was the icing on the cake.
Re: sex, lies and videotape (the movie) ;) « Result #12 on Nov 26, 2009, 7:08am »
I think that the moment where Graham opens his eyes is the moment he realises he has overcome the erectile dysfunction. That does not mean I think they had intercourse. I like the ambiguity. I like that people have different opinions and that we feel okay about having different opinions.
Re: Race - Reviews « Result #13 on Nov 26, 2009, 6:49am »
“Every once in a while,” Mr. Kelley said, “James would call me and say, ‘Remember in the early shows when Alan would throw evidence away and blithely break the rules? I miss that guy a bit.’
Gonegirl, it seems Spader agrees with your view on the way the character of Alan Shore changed!!!!!!!
So Many Dark Sides By PATRICK HEALY Published: November 25, 2009
“CULTIVATE the appearance of contrition,” the character Jack Lawson, a lawyer, tells a white client accused of raping a black woman in “Race,” a new play opening on Broadway next Sunday. As uttered with don’t-waste-my-time iciness by the actor James Spader, the clipped and merciless directive telegraphs not only that this is dialogue by David Mamet, but also that it is set in the kind of up-for-grabs moral universe that Spader characters have been occupying in Hollywood for years.
The sexy sleazes he played in the mid-1980s, most notably the preppy Steff in “Pretty in Pink,” gave way to the twisted and perverse protagonists of “sex, lies, and videotape” (1989), “Crash” (1996) and his latest major film, “Secretary,” in 2002. Then came Alan Shore, the outrageously sardonic, ethically cynical lawyer on both “The Practice” and “Boston Legal” on ABC. In that role Mr. Spader’s instincts for dark, enigmatic characters grounded an entire performance, one that won him three Emmys.
His Jack Lawson is like Alan Shore on Paxil — calmer and focused but no less brazen. And if Lawson does not represent especially new ground in Mr. Spader’s oeuvre, this latest incarnation of a slick lawyer, who at first appears more ruthless than anyone else onstage, taps into his many discomfiting talents. After two decades of personifying the creepy id in our collective imagination, Mr. Spader is finally on intimate view as audiences come face to face with the snake in the room.
“I’m most drawn to characters who are compelling and repellant at the same time, very often right at the same moment, and who are frightening and funny all at once,” Mr. Spader said over tea recently near the theater district.
“Mamet writes these characters better than anyone,” he continued, in his measured and highly enunciated speaking style. “And after decades away from theater work I was excited by the central ideas in ‘Race,’ where each character is both a protagonist and an antagonist. There are no heroes in this story.”
Inhabiting a leading Mamet man who has never been portrayed by another actor is particularly exciting for Mr. Spader, whose career has reached something of a turning point. After “Boston Legal” ended last December, he found himself uncertain about what to do next. In February he will turn 50 — an age that is hard to fathom for those who remember him as the seductively handsome drug dealer Rip in “Less Than Zero.” His physique is no longer trim, and his eyesight has long been poor. But with “Race,” he is tackling the challenges that theater affords, and also imposing his exacting and sometimes unusual work habits on a new cast.
“We’re all amazed by how ferocious and smart James has been in thrusting himself into Mamet’s world,” said Kerry Washington, who tangles with Mr. Spader as the young black legal assistant in his firm. “He doesn’t take a single second of his behavior onstage for granted. If James doesn’t feel that it’s right for his character to get out of a chair at a particular moment, he’ll say, ‘We have to figure out how to get out of the chair in a way that’s honest.’ ”
Researching and rehearsing a role until he enters a zone of concentration is a Spader trademark, several colleagues say. Susan Sarandon, who played a working-class waitress in a torrid affair with the younger, wealthier Mr. Spader in “White Palace,” said that before shooting their first make-out scene, he proposed that they dance in his trailer so they could become better acquainted. Holly Hunter, his co-star in “Crash,” said Mr. Spader would “invite us all over to his place to prepare for ‘Crash’ by watching a mini-festival of movies” like “Vanishing Point,” the cult classic about explosive car chases.
Maggie Gyllenhaal, who played the socially awkward assistant to Mr. Spader’s character, the eccentric and mysterious Mr. Grey, in “Secretary,” said he immersed himself in the character almost beyond recognition. He was often as formal off-screen as Mr. Grey was on camera, said Ms. Gyllenhaal, who did not know his phone number, rarely if ever saw him off the set and was unsure if he had children. (He has two older sons with his former wife, Victoria Kheel, and a toddler with his girlfriend, Leslie Stefanson.)
“One day he was sitting on a couch and said really loudly, with a Mr. Grey tone, ‘Who should I speak to about having a very expensive box of chocolates put in my room?’ ” Ms. Gyllenhaal said. “And a couple of days later, I got a knock on the door of my trailer, which I shared with James, separated by a little wall. It was a production assistant who said, ‘James would like to see you.’ Now James was literally five feet from me, but this assistant was sent. So I went down my little steps, and up his little steps, and — in a very serious tone — he invited me in for a chocolate before we did an intense sexy scene together.
“What he was doing was open-hearted, supportive, loving,” she added, “but also pretty unusual.”
Mr. Spader said that he had no fixed approach to acting — “I’ve spent my life striving against any kind of ideology” — but added that he believes in exploring the nuances of his scripts and characters.
That “appreciation for detail and minutiae,” as Mr. Spader describes his affection for acting, helped secure his most sustained professional success so far, “Boston Legal,” which ran for five seasons. Its creator, David E. Kelley, said that Mr. Spader’s line readings, facial expressions, physical gestures and courtroom pauses were “perfect in their fine detail.”
The two men bonded over his character Alan Shore. “Every once in a while,” Mr. Kelley said, “James would call me and say, ‘Remember in the early shows when Alan would throw evidence away and blithely break the rules? I miss that guy a bit.’ And I would say yeah, I did too. Of course, we both had such a love for the character that we wanted to protect him.”
For Mr. Spader, characters who explore their macabre impulses — the car accident fetishist in “Crash,” the sadomasochistic spanker in “Secretary” — are enticing because he finds them different from himself.
“I don’t have much interest in spilling myself onto the screen or the stage or on television,” he said. “It’s fun to explore behavior that you can’t explore in your own life, so you fool around with it in acting.”
The son of two teachers, Mr. Spader grew up in a yachting town in Massachusetts and attended Phillips Academy in Andover. At 17 he dropped out, a decision that he would explain only by citing “dwindling attendance.” He moved to New York City, where his sister had an empty living room floor for him to crash on.
He picked up manual-labor jobs — as a meat-truck driver he once went back to Andover to party with his old friends — and began to pursue acting, which he had enjoyed since performing in plays in grammar school. He enrolled in an acting school named for Michael Chekhov, the Russian émigré actor whose technique emphasized movement, improvisation and imagination. Mr. Spader also performed in several pieces at the Actors Studio, though he declined an invitation to audition there.
Soon Hollywood was calling. Agents and actors had taken notice of him in New York, and his early, small performances demonstrated both sensitivity and pathos. His good looks, wavy dirty-blond hair and blue eyes also drew casting directors, and he landed roles as troubled teenagers.
His seemingly innocent face hardly proved an obstacle to Mr. Spader’s growing desire, in the late ’80s, to land more emotionally complex roles. He made his break-out performance as a sexual voyeur in Steven Soderbergh’s “sex, lies, and videotape,” for which Mr. Spader won the best actor award at the Cannes Film Festival. He became sought after to play men in romantically or sexually dysfunctional relationships in films like “Bad Influence” and “White Palace.”
“In our movie he had to play somebody who was very vulnerable and inhibited, and those aren’t at the top of the list of really attractive qualities,” Ms. Sarandon said.
After watching “sex, lies, and videotape,” the director Mike Nichols decided to cast Mr. Spader in “Wolf” (1994) as a young corporate climber who is turned into a werewolf. Janet Maslin, reviewing the film for The New York Times, credited Mr. Spader with “still turning the business of being despicable into a fine art.” Mr. Nichols said in an interview that he had been impressed by Mr. Spader’s “hunger to play parts that don’t allow you to coast.”
“He needs moments in a script to chew on,” he added. “He starts out in ‘Wolf’ as this slightly supercilious guy, but as the lupine characteristics began to encroach, he found actual human characteristics involving hearing and smelling and awareness that he made recognizable in the beast.”
Mr. Spader also seems not to have the actor’s gene for needing to be liked.
“I’m very selfish about my work,” he said. “I’ve always made the decisions, in terms of what I did in the business, without any real regard with how it was going to be received by others.”
While he had no formal audition for “Race” — Mr. Mamet (who is also directing) offered him the part over lunch — Mr. Spader said he was confident that he could “bring the art of great, unvarnished conversation to life, which is what ‘Race’ is about.” (Mr. Mamet, in trademark fashion, declined to be interviewed.) Just as exciting, Mr. Spader said, was unwinding another knotty character on a new proving ground, Broadway.
“When doing theater, you have to find great satisfaction in the small things,” he said. “There’s going to be a repetition and a redundancy night after night, but it’s the small variations in those moments — a word, a tone of voice, the smallest sense of enlightenment that can happen in an instant onstage — that will be the most rewarding.”
I take films for pretty selfish reasons. I mean I don't take them for how they might end up. I take them for how they'll be to make. - James Spader For Boston Legal transcripts go to http://boston-legal.org/episodes.shtml#transcripts
You can only **** in so many ways you know. If I'm able to find a film that plays with some of that, then I like it. I'm game, always game. (James Spader interview)
Re: sex, lies and videotape (the movie) ;) « Result #17 on Nov 25, 2009, 1:14pm »
The first time I watched the movie, I thought they had sex. Now that I've seen it many many more times, I feel more certain that they didn't. The scene title is "Cured". Graham's problem was that he "couldn't get an erection in the presence of another person" and Ann didn't know if she'd "ever had one" (orgasm). All that had to happen for "Cured" was that he got an erection, which he demostrated by the surprised look on his face after she had him touch her face and settled him back on the couch, and that she had an orgasm, which I agree with Spaderific, was probably achieved through alternative means. What an unbelievably sexy movie, for one that shows no nudity, and no sex!
Ok, I talked with Paulette tonight and she gave me some info. Gonegirl = Barbara The butterflies are both Peggy. Adele = Maximumblue
I have a hard time keeping these straight.
Me too! That's why I tend to stick with the 'user' name to avoid confusion.
It's been fascinating to see pictures of people who up to now have just been names. Sometimes I've instinctively put the right faces to names. I did that with Paulette (aka Justbecause) and when I saw a picture of 'Kim' I thought "I bet that's Spaderific!"
You can only **** in so many ways you know. If I'm able to find a film that plays with some of that, then I like it. I'm game, always game. (James Spader interview)
You can only **** in so many ways you know. If I'm able to find a film that plays with some of that, then I like it. I'm game, always game. (James Spader interview)
Thank you so much, flying dreams! That is very nice of you to say! I am bad with putting nicknames together. I know sassygal is Donna, hhogwild is Nancy, butterfly is Peggy, jazzed4james is Terri, and justbecause is Paulette.
I'm sorry but I don't remember your real name Are you Adele?
No, my name is Tianying. And I'm from Shanghai, China.
You can only **** in so many ways you know. If I'm able to find a film that plays with some of that, then I like it. I'm game, always game. (James Spader interview)
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