Random Fuzzy
At the time of the VF interview two months ago, she made it clear that she was not in a position to think about film work.
Jolie has no interest in working on another film at this particular moment—her life just doesn’t have the space for it.
But in a more recent interview with Jeremy Kay for Screen International, she was comfortable discussing forthcoming and potential acting roles.
She is not exactly sure what’s next. Family, probably acting. She signed on to Disney’s Maleficent sequel, and laughs when Bill Condon’s Bride Of Frankenstein reboot is mentioned. “There has been a discussion, but we’re not quite there. How many monsters can one play, really?”Kay incidentally had previously interviewed Brad for The Guardian.
That she readily acknowledges that she is "probably acting" next after devoting time to "family" is another clear indication that the family has officially healed. Her life now has the "space" to allow her to get back to work. Brad is busy filming Ad Astra and they have resumed alternating between working and looking after the children.
That she has officially signed on to Maleficent 2 indicates she likes what they have so far and felt it was good enough for her to commit. This obviously means she likes Butterworth's script.
Her willingness to publicly confirm her commitment means they may be heading into production fairly soon. The film may still lack a director but they are otherwise already "there." This is likely "what's next" for her.
Bride of Frankenstein is already in pre-production and she would be free to work on it as soon as Ad Astra wraps. But after years of being on Universal's wish-list, Bride may be too similar to Maleficent for her to sign on.
“There has been a discussion, but we’re not quite there. How many monsters can one play, really?”
That was my concern with her playing two re-imagined iconic characters who are both outwardly frightening but ultimately good hearted and heroic.
We can deduce from her remarks that Bride's script envisions the character as a monster in a manner that she doesn't find sufficiently compelling: Maleficent without the horns in a bridal gown.
The sequel to her highest grossing film was announced in 2015 and she would want to protect her ability to play the character -- one her children are apparently fond of.
It sounds like she may not have turned down Bride outright and the door may still be open for Universal to find a way that would allow her to play both characters. She may be making the extra effort to try to accommodate the studio out of a sense of gratitude for Unbroken and By the Sea. But since her concern centers on playing another monster and Bride is part of a planned monster universe, it will not be an easy problem to fix.
It is perhaps a measure of how much Universal wants Angelina to play the Bride that even at this late stage there are still no published reports of other actresses being considered for the role. And yet, realistically, they must have a plan b waiting in the wings given that the problem looks intractable and they already announced a release date.
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Kay's non-review description of FTKMF is that it is a "stirring yet unsentimental film adaptation (which) seemed to crystallise so much of the dignity and despair she had witnessed."
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She declined to use the opportunity to publicly respond to VF, instead indicating that she wants to bring the dispute to a close -- despite the fact that VF had responded publicly to what had been a private request from her lawyer. This suggests that her lawyer may have acted independently when he contacted VF asking for a retraction and apology.
Jolie says she regards the matter as closed, but stresses that guardians and parents were present at all times during child auditions, and all parties knew the process involved make-believe.As noted previously, VF''s published response indicated they didn't realize it was what their writer omitted rather than what she wrote that was at the heart of the problem. It was the details she left out that led to the impression that the children didn't know it was all a "pretend" game and which in turn led to the criticism that the children were manipulated or exploited.
-- Fussy
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Angelina Jolie on her new Netflix film 'First They Killed My Father': "I made it for Cambodia"https://t.co/RhFZz5AbQ5 pic.twitter.com/MKhA5HKsOq— Screen International (@Screendaily) August 29, 2017
Angelina Jolie, actress, filmmaker and human-rights activist, makes her most personal work yet with a 1970s-set drama about the Cambodian genocide. She talks to Screen about her Toronto international premiere First They Killed My Father.
Angelina Jolie chanced upon Loung Ung’s bestselling memoir First They Killed My Father in a Cambodian market some 17 years ago while shooting Tomb Raider — “a two-dollar paperback you find when travelling” that was as far removed as one can get from Lara Croft leaping across temples in the steaming jungle.
For Jolie, the book and the stirring yet unsentimental film adaptation it would inspire seemed to crystallise so much of the dignity and despair she had witnessed in the stricken Southeast Asian country she would return to again and again as a humanitarian activist and, later, a citizen and resident.
Ung and Jolie met through their activism work when Jolie went back shortly after Tomb Raider. One night they found themselves swaying in hammocks in the middle of a monsoon, talking through the night. “We bonded and she’s been in my life ever since,” Jolie says.
Ung was five when the Khmer Rouge emerged from the jungle in 1975 to overthrow Lon Nol’s military rule and turn a once-prosperous former French colonial outpost into an isolated death chamber. She and her middle-class family were marched out of the capital Phnom Penh and into the fields, like millions of city-dwellers across the country. When invading Vietnamese troops overthrew the Khmer Rouge in 1979, the young girl had lost both parents and two of her six -siblings. Around two million people — nearly a quarter of Cambodia’s population — had been wiped out.
The two women adapted the screenplay years ago. After several more drafts, Netflix agreed in 2015 to fully finance and produce the project. In June of that year, Jolie enlisted the support of Rithy Panh, the Cambodian director of Khmer Rouge documentary The Missing Picture. Panh became a producer on the Khmer-language project and took the lead in months of meetings with the authorities and NGOs to establish permission to shoot the film on Cambodian soil.
The filmmakers had to tread carefully. This was not Thailand, Jolie reminded herself, where The Killing Fields had shot many years before. “You are bringing a film to a country and asking the people who lived through it to recreate a history with you. I really didn’t know if [the authorities] were going to say yes.”
Reliving the past
Jolie was prepared to scale back the production and work within whatever framework the authorities would provide. However, she got what she wanted and the 50-day shoot in Siem Reap and Battambang finally got underway in November 2015.
“Then, of course, you get to the set and you’re standing there with your friend and you have to recreate scenes of her father being taken and killed, and you have to try to walk through the steps of somebody’s life.” Jolie pauses and her voice fades a little. “You bring back. You bring back the people who passed. You bring back her sisters. And, of course, it was always the happy scenes that seemed to make her the most upset.”
Jolie and her international heads of department and crew trained local counterparts, corralled large numbers of extras, braved tarantulas and snakes in the jungle, and avoided landmines and other unexploded ordnance. “Luckily, we were able to complete the film without a single incident on set,” she says.
Navigating through complicated emotional terrain was harder. The local crew helped to communicate with the largely inexperienced cast, which included Sareum Srey Moch, the nine-year-old -newcomer who played Ung without acting classes and impressed her director.
Moch took part in a casting process that came under scrutiny in a recent cover story in Vanity Fair, which suggested that the filmmakers had used emotional manipulation during child auditions, triggering angry comments online about Jolie.
The UN goodwill ambassador and mother of six issued a firm rebuttal with Panh. When the subject is mentioned, Jolie says she regards the matter as closed, but stresses that guardians and parents were present at all times during child auditions, and all parties knew the process involved make-believe.
Throughout filming, her goal was to foster a therapeutic and cathartic environment for her cast, employing NGO staff, educators, de-miners and a therapist. “The country really doesn’t talk about this time and everybody in their mid-40s remembers,” Jolie says. “So when you have a scene where suddenly everyone comes dressed in Khmer Rouge outfits with guns, people were having experiences, they were remembering. Some people were talking for the first time.”
First They Killed My Father has enabled Jolie to feel even closer to a country she has lived and worked in for 14 years. “When you direct a film it is very different from when you act in a film, when you try to give your all and it’s a few months of your life and you have your part to play,” she states. “When you direct a film, it’s years of your life and it has to really matter to you because it’s all-consuming.
“For me, these are the things that matter and these films are about trying to understand man’s inhumanity to man and how the human spirit overcomes, how you can go through darkness and come out stronger and still whole,” she continues. “When you do a film about history and culture, you’re allowed into something so special.
“With this particular film all the more so because although Maddox [Jolie’s adopted eldest son, a native Cambodian] goes back often with me and we have a foundation there, this was the first time he was able to spend months there and study the history of his country, really understanding, going deep into what his birth parents most likely went through, and coming to terms with that and knowing who he is.”
Giving back
Sixteen-year-old Maddox served as an executive producer on the film and was there from the start, working long hours on drafts and physical production, and acting as a sounding board. “I wanted him to work hard and give back himself to his country,” says Jolie, who is in no doubt about who she made the film for. “I made it for Cambodia. I made it as a kind of thank you, a love letter. There hadn’t been a story on this scale that would reach people in their language, with them being the hero.”Did she every worry that as a non-native the Cambodians would question her right to make a film like First They Killed My Father? “You’d probably have to ask the Cambodians. It was 2005 when I became a citizen. I’ve been there about 14 years, coming and going, doing my work. We feel… I am a Cambodian. We are a Cambodian family. We’re a Namibian family, an Ethiopian family, an American family. That’s who we are,” Jolie says, referring to the nationalities of her adopted and biological children. “I don’t feel outside in that country. And I didn’t feel I was there to take their history and tell their story. I was just a vessel for them to tell their story.”
The drama received its world premiere in February, outdoors at the Angkor Wat complex. Jolie and Ung could not sleep the night before, but they need not have worried — the screening and those that followed across Cambodia in the following weeks “sparked a bigger discussion in the country among families who have not discussed [the genocide]”.
Netflix will launch First They Killed My Father worldwide on September 15, following a brief theatrical run in Cambodia. Jolie likes the idea it will be on a streaming platform, there for viewers to watch when they feel ready. “On my first film [as director on 2011’s In The Land Of Blood And Honey], a lot of people who were Bosnian said they needed to stop, take a break and come back, so I was very aware of that.”
She is not exactly sure what’s next. Family, probably acting. She signed on to Disney’s Maleficent sequel, and laughs when Bill Condon’s Bride Of Frankenstein reboot is mentioned. “There has been a discussion, but we’re not quite there. How many monsters can one play, really?”
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