Do You Love to Cook? Foster Wows Crowd
STORY & PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK
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ear of cats. Martians. Film
directors who won’t come
out of the bathroom…
Jodie Foster didn’t seem to let
any topic go untouched Sunday
morning during a lively give
and take with a full house at the
nexStage Theater in Ketchum.
Foster, a frequent visitor to
Sun Valley, presented a 15-minute look at her life as an actor
and director during a free Coffee
Talk organized by the second annual Sun Valley Film Festival.
Then she fielded questions for 45
more minutes.
One observer said she learned
as many lessons listening to
Foster as she would’ve learned in
Sunday School that morning.
No matter how much you
know about cameras and lenses,
the most important thing you
contribute to the filmmaking
process is your inner life, the
Academy Award-winning actress
told the audience.
“You need to download your
life story,” she said, stressing
the need to be authentic. “If I
made a movie about Martians,
those Martians would probably
have issues with their mother,”
quipped Foster, whose mother
managed her career.
Foster described an experience
she had as a child in which a tiger grabbed her. All of a sudden,
she said, she saw the film crew
running the other direction and
the trainer was shouting at the
tiger, “Drop it!”
She rolled down an incline
whereupon the tiger then swatted her with its giant paw.
“The good news is I’m fine,
save for a few tiny scars,” she
said. “My mom likened it to getting bucked off a horse. ‘You’ve
got to get back on,’ she said. I
made the movie but I still have a
small fear of cats!”
Foster said she doesn’t think
of herself as being a big movie
star but, rather, an actor who
has made some successful movies.
Her favorite movie, she said,
is “The Silence of the Lambs,”
about a cannibalistic serial
killer. It was incredibly hard
to make, she said—something
akin to performing emergency
surgery.
“It was not so fun while we
were doing it, but we can look
back at the end of the day and
say, ‘What a great thing we did,’”
she added. “It’s a movie I hope
people will want to remember.
It’s a movie about death, dying,
cruelty… but there is a shining
light of goodness.”
One of the most difficult
films she ever made was “Panic
Room,” in which she portrayed a
mother who was imprisoned in
the panic room of her house by
three criminals.
She was six months pregnant
when she made the film, and the
director David Fincher was a
perfectionist, which sometimes
meant doing a hundred takes,
she said.
“It’s the longest shoot I’ve ever
done in my life—110 days,” she
said. There was no light in the
house, no furniture, it was basically a box. How can you shoot
110 days in a box?!”
While she loves acting, Foster
said she loves directing more
because it requires the use of the
brain. When acting, she added,
you spend a lot of time suppressing your intellect.
One youngster asked her if she
has nightmares about any of her
movies.
“No, but I have dreams,”
acknowledged Foster, who was
honored with the Golden Globe
Awards’ Lifetime Achievement
Award earlier this year.
“Even though I’m pretending,
I’m still carrying that with me.
It influences, impacts me, the
rest of my life,” she said. “Interestingly, the characters I have
played didn’t know they had
Jodie Foster said she makes movies
about people who are trying to reach
out to communicate but can’t. I’m attracted to stories of loneliness and the
beauty and curse of being solitary.
survival skills. But they found in
themselves a way to survive…”
FOSTER SOUNDBITES
My heart goes out to young
actors who are (struggling with
not having a normal childhood).
They can’t be just who they are
because someone is watching.
…Now I think about who I might
have been. I’m not mad about it
but I’m not challenged about it
anymore.
(Aspiring actors and filmmakers) don’t say we’re dying to hold
a boom in our hands. We want to
be part of a great story.
Life is like a 2-by-4. We can
build a building or hit someone
over the head.
When I was little, I thought I
was just saying words somebody
else wrote and that it was a
dumb job. I learned I wanted to
be an actor many years later in
my 20s.
I think ‘Taxi Driver’ is one of
the best American movies ever
made. It’s a reflection of who we
were in the 1970s.
I usually have a good attitude
and am easy to work with, but
sometimes I become the devil.
The thing that sets me off is directors who don’t plan, who don’t
have an idea what they’re doing,
who waste everybody else’s time.
A director is a mother/father
figure. And, as an actor, I’m
there to serve him. That’s my job.
Actors are weird and each one
needs attention. My relationship
with an actor as a director is to
be a parent. I tell them: The train
is leaving at 8:14—I need you to
be on that train…
When actors offer dumb ideas
about how to do things, I say: Let
me think about that. That way,
they’ve saved face. You’ve heard
them but you haven’t shut them
down. I want actors to give me
all of their ideas because one
out of 15 might be good. If I shut
them down I don’t get that one
good idea.
One of the biggest mistakes
directors make is thinking they’ve
got a movie down pat in their
hotel room. You can’t make a film
in your hotel room. You’ve got 175
people, each who brings little bit
of themselves and their mothers
and fathers to the process. But
no, these directors say, ‘Well,
it worked perfectly in my hotel
room...’
The second people lose respect
for a director, the film is over. It’s
like being president of a country
and everybody realizes you’re
a dumb ass. Total anarchy. If
the director is in the bathroom
the whole movie and won’t come
out, somebody has to direct the
movie—and give the director the
credit.
tws
T h e W e e k l y S u n • M a r c h 2 0 , 2 0 1 3 briefs
UpBeat with
Alasdair: ‘Dressing
the Mannequin’
When we pass a storefront window and catch a glimpse of the mannequins, our eyes are invariably drawn
to their clothes, yet we certainly recognize the shape of the torso beneath.
Join Sun Valley Summer Symphony
Music Director Alasdair Neale for another “Upbeat with Alasdair” as he
shows how composers can manipulate raw material to create new and
imaginative sounds. Rachmaninoff’s
Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini
and Colin Matthews’ orchestrations
of Debussy’s Piano Preludes are the
mannequins in question: come see
how they’re dressed up!
The free event is at 6:30 p.m., on
Thursday, March 21 at The Community Library in Ketchum. Please reserve
your seat by calling the Symphony at
208-622-5607 or email [email protected]
Free Home Front
Panel Discussion
As part of its Home Front project,
the Sun Valley Center for the Arts, in
conjunction with Higher Ground, is
hosting a panel discussion, Returning
Home, that will look at what happens
when a soldier comes back from deployment.
The free discussion, to be held
at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 4 at
The Liberty Theatre in Hailey, will be
moderated by Bert Gillette, Military
Outreach Officer from Higher Ground,
and include Navy SEAL Pete Scobell;
Christina Valentine, wife of a deceased
Navy SEAL; and Trina McDonald, a Gulf
War veteran featured in the film Invisible War. A medical professional experienced in working with PTSD will also
join the conversation.
Additional Home Front programs
include a talk by Admiral Jay L. Johnson on April 2, a staged reading of
Time Stands Still on April 12, and on
April 18 a workshop of a new play by
Clay McLeod Chapman titled, Guiding Light. Both theatre productions
are presented by Company of Fools, a
proud part of the Sun Valley Center for
the Arts. For details, visit www.sunvalleycenter.org.
Mamma Mia! ABBA
Is Back - Tickets
Go on Sale April 1
Sun Valley Opera announces The
Music of ABBA (ARRIVAL From Sweden) in the Sun Valley Pavilion on Sunday, July 7, along with the American
Festival Chorus and Orchestra. Playing
to rave reviews throughout world, this
is the only group sanctioned by ABBA to perform their music. With voices,
physical appearance very close to the
original group, costumes which are
all made under license from ABBA’s
original designer, and the same mannerisms, people who attend the concert will feel as though they have gone
back in time and were watching the
original ABBA in concert.
The group has toured 35 nations
in addition to appearing on television and radio throughout the world.
If schedules allow, some of the original band members will also be there.
The original group’s songs topped the
charts worldwide from 1972-1982.
Joining in The Music of ABBA is The
American Festival Chorus and Orchestra, which was founded in 2008 by Dr.
Craig Jessop, former director of the
Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Jessop is
the artistic director and conductor of
270 talented singers from Utah and an
orchestra which is a professional ensemble made up of instrumentalists
from Utah State University including
members of the highly acclaimed Fry
Street Quartet of Utah State University.
Tickets go on sale April 1. Diva tickets are available at www.sunvalley.
com or by calling 208-726-0991 and
general admission tickets are available at www.seats.sunvalley.com or
by calling 208-622-2135.
Got news?
We want it!
Send it to Leslie Thompson at
[email protected]