The oscar-nominated ‘Puss in Boots’ chronicles the heroic beginning of the beloved big-eyed feline. When Humpty Dumpty finally finds a way to make their childhood dream of finding the magic beans come true, he needs Puss’ help to execute it. But it’s also going to be a three man (cat, egg, cat) job.

That’s where the character of Kitty Softpaws comes into the story, who’s the greatest thief in all of Old Spain. “Salma Hayek is Kitty Softpaws,” supplies Chris Miller, “and in her performance, she’s beautiful, strong and sensual, but most importantly, she’s funny — Salma’s a really funny actress and she gets to really show that off in this.

Because she brings this working relationship with Antonio to the character [this is their fifth film together], it feels really authentic. You can tell that they are good friends, because they fight really well together, which brings sparks to their onscreen romantic relationship. They’re a great duo.”

“I love Salma’s voice, it’s rich and deep, and it works so well for Kitty,” Joe Aguilar elaborates, “Puss in Boots’ backstory always included having a history with the ladies, so we had to build a character that was worthy of him. And so we created Kitty Softpaws. We immediately thought of Salma Hayek and were very excited that she was willing to come aboard.

We knew that their chemistry would be strong, from their work in live-action films. We knew their voices would work well together, too. Kitty Softpaws is somebody who wasn’t going to be easy for Puss to attain, she had to be strong and interesting. We were trying to paint a picture of a character that wasn’t just a femme fatale.”

Latifa Ouaou observes, “Comedy probably isn’t the first thing you think when you think of Salma Hayek. She’s got a great voice, and while we knew she could be sultry, she’s actually really amazing with comedy. She’s extremely witty and she brought a lot of her own attributes to the character. There’s something really special about a female character who knows what she wants and doesn’t really need anyone else to get it.”

Hayek was thrilled to voice the strong, independent and funny feline: “Everything about this film is fun and exciting. To start with, it’s the first time I’ve worked with animation, and I’ve been wanting to do one for a long time. It could not have come at a better time, because now I get to share this one with my daughter.

I have become an animation expert since she was born…and I say with a lot of pride that even though I think I’ve seen every animated movie that’s ever been done, I think this one’s in the top ten for sure.” There were logistical points that also worked for Hayek: “There was a convenience that I really liked. I could work in my pajamas. And because I travel a lot, I was able to record in about five cities.”

Almost illustrating Ouaou’s point about development and production coinciding, it wasn’t until partway into the recording sessions that a key facet of Kitty’s character came into being. Head of story Persichetti: “When I work, there are all of these things that are bouncing around in my head, like the idea of a cat burglar who’s really a cat.

They’re really quiet. Maybe it’s to overcome an inadequacy? It was a slow gel for her character. It may have been our third or fourth iteration of the early assemblage of the film, but it was like, of course! She doesn’t have any claws! This is the thing that’s she’s overcoming, but now, we can play with it, because it’s this incredible skill that she can basically steal the beans out of Jack’s hand without him even feeling it.

She can steal Puss’ boots without him realizing it. She’s the ultimate pickpocket. So, it just kind of worked out really well. And it adds this interesting layer to her whole sexy Latina character.”

Hayek loved her character and describes her: “She’s a very good verbal fighter, and also a very good physical fighter.  She’s also an amazing thief, one of the best that are out there. And she’s proud of it. I enjoy that she always wins, and that she’s always right. And even though Puss keeps fighting her and continues to try and prove her wrong, he can’t. It’s really a joy to be this kind of a cat.”

So symbiotic is the back-and-forth performance between Banderas and Hayek that Antonio made a request of the filmmakers. “I’ve worked with Salma since the beginning of the ‘90s, and she’s a dear friend. Normally, in animation, we work alone. But this is the only time that I asked for a session with an actor, because with Salma, I know that we have such chemistry, and especially, we fight very well on camera.

We have a kind of rhythm and we can improvise. So I asked them to bring her here with me, and we did a session together. And we got a number of things from it. It was great to work with her again.”

“Antonio is wonderful in this role,” responds Hayek. “He was born to play this cat. We’ve been working together for a long time, and we’ve done many movies together. It’s always a pleasure and a joy. We were lucky to have a recording session together, even though they usually don’t happen – everybody’s so busy and in different places, but we managed to schedule it.

We were both improvising and some of the stuff that we did actually ended up in the film. He is so much this character, and I know him so well by now, that when I was recording without him, I could feel him there like a ghost saying the other lines. I love him in this part, and know exactly what he would say as Puss, even when he is not in the room.”

Image Courtesy of   https://www.facebook.com/Pussinboots

The article Salma Hayek as Kitty Softpaws in ‘Puss in Boots’ appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

When Kaui Hart Hemmings was first creating the character of Matt King — shell-shocked husband, inexpert father and reluctant Hawaiian land baron — she dared to dream of who might play him on the screen. The person that came to her back then was George Clooney, the Academy Award winning actor and filmmaker renowned for performances that are often as darkly funny as they are palpably human.

Clooney has established himself as one of today‘s leading men, but the chance to play a husband and father in ‘The Descendants’ is a notable departure from his usual roles. He was the smooth-talking convict in the Coen Brothers‘ screwball musical comedy ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’, the heist pro in the blockbuster Ocean’s Eleven series, the CIA agent in an Oscar winning performance in Stephen Gaghan‘s ‘Syriana’.

He was also nominated for an Academy Award for his performances as the law firm fixer in Tony Gilroy‘s thriller ‘Michael Clayton’ and the workaholic, airline miles collector in Jason Reitman‘s ‘Up In The Air’.

Clooney has also made his mark as a writer/director, garnering Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Screenplay for ‘Good Night, And Good Luck’, and directing and co-writing this fall‘s ‘The Ides of March’. Co-producer George Parra notes that the pairing of Payne and Clooney for the first time on this project was an intriguing match. “They‘re both incredibly talented and, after this movie, I think they will forever be friends.

They got along from day one. Alexander is the ultimate professional, very serious and polite and can be fun at times. But he‘s very serious when he‘s at work. George, on the other hand, is the ultimate prankster. He loves to laugh a lot and he‘s hysterical, so between their two personalities, the set had terrific energy.”

They were both open to great creativity and just letting the film happen. Once Clooney was cast in the central role, the challenge was to build the rest of the King family around him. Payne soon began an exhaustive series of auditions to find that tricky family chemistry made up of equal parts love, fury and miscomprehension, working closely with casting director John Jackson, who has collaborated with him since his first film, ‘Citizen Ruth’.

The director considers the auditions a significant part of the creative process. “We auditioned a ton of people for every part, even one line parts. I think auditions are good. I like to have actors come in and read the words,” Payne says. It was especially key to find two young actresses who were capable of holding their own against Clooney in the roles of his two willful and defiant daughters Alexandra and Scottie, who resent Matt for never having been an involved parent until now.

“I’m the back-up parent. The understudy.”– Matt King

For Alexandra, a feisty free spirit who worries that she takes after the mother she is angry with, Payne ultimately chose Shailene Woodley, best known for the television series The Secret Life of the American Teenager. Woodley, in her first major film role, struck Payne right away as ready to take on the emotional rigors of a role that would take her from a boarding school bad girl to a young woman trying to stitch her family back together.

“Like the rest of the cast, she gave the best audition,” recalls Payne. “It was as simple as that.” Woodley was thrilled because, by the time she auditioned, she was already in love with the story. “It‘s a heart-wrenching journey about growth,” she comments. “I love how everybody in the story grows in their ability to love, grows in maturity, in figuring out their individuality and who they are as a family.”

As for Alexandra, Woodley enjoyed the idea of taking her from a wild rebel with a chip on her shoulder to a young woman ready to battle for her loved ones. “She starts out as a teenager who feels like a victim — to her, the reason why her life is horrible is because her dad did this and her mom did that,” she observes.

“But during the course of the movie, she starts to realize that she‘s responsible for her own happiness and it isn‘t up to her parents. It‘s fun to watch her grow up in the moment.  She‘s always been a bit manipulative but now she‘s doing it to help her dad fight his demons.”

Alexandra‘s relationship with Matt is one that Woodley believes a lot of kids will relate to from their own experiences. “I think she loves her dad but she kind of looks at him as the childish one in their relationship and she‘s always felt like she needed to take on a parenting role with him,” Woodley describes. “It‘s only later that she learns to give him his own power as a father.”

Another big challenge for Woodley was finding all the multi-colored shadings of Alexandra‘s barrage of mixed feelings around her mother that are at once incredulous, angry, worried, sad and freaked out. Woodley had to literally dive deep, as this storm of emotions begins in a pivotal scene when her father tells her that her mother is not going to recover while she‘s taking a dip in the family pool. “She‘s in the pool, treading water and she has no idea how to react to this news,” explains Woodley.

“She feels trapped, so she submerges herself into the water, the one place where she can scream at the top of her lungs and not feel vulnerable. It was such an emotional release to go down there and scream and cry hysterically. It was heartbreaking for me to do, but also empowering.” Later, when Alexandra sees her once wildly vibrant mother unresponsive in a hospital bed, her raw emotions come to the surface.

“In that scene, I think part of Alexandra hates her mom and part of her just wants to be held and cry in her mother‘s arms for hours. It is very emotional,” says Woodley. “I think the little girl in Alexandra just yearns for the mother she always wanted but never had, but the young woman in Alexandra is starting to accept that it will never happen.”

Image Courtesy of   Joe Seer / Shutterstock.com

The article Shailene Woodley Impresses in ‘The Descendants’ appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

From the outset, one of the keys to the popularity of the character of Puss in Boots was the voice that came out of the outlaw hero: Antonio Banderas.

Director Chris Miller: “Puss in Boots is played by Antonio Banderas, or is Antonio Banderas played by Puss in Boots? I don’t know, sometimes it’s hard to tell the two of them apart. But one thing’s for sure, one could not exist without the other, because Antonio brings such passion to the role.

This tiny little creature should have, you would think, a squeaky voice — but out of his mouth comes this deep sound. There some real humor created in the juxtaposition of the two. Here’s this great actor with a massive voice, and he’s voicing this cute, furry animal. What I love about Antonio’s performance is when he takes himself the most seriously, and Puss is doing something truer to his nature, like chasing a point of light.”

Joe Aguilar comments, “I think the attraction to the character starts with Antonio. His performance is fun, charismatic, full of machismo, mystery and adventure. And then, you look at the cat, and then you hear that deep sound coming out of his mouth — you start cracking up and you want to know more.” Banderas himself says, “He’s such a great character. There are so many different colors that we’ve been discovering since I started giving him my voice in 2002.

He’s romantic and he’s an epic hero. He’s got a great heart. He’s got a sense of honor and loyalty — along with a little bit of something mischievous that I think just adds an edge that is interesting. The kids love that, too, that side of him. But when he started in the Shrek movies, we really didn’t know much about him. He was and still is a bit mysterious. For me, actually, the character is a dichotomy and that’s what makes him funny.”

Waxing somewhat philosophic, the actor looks at the larger things that the tiny cat stands for: “You know for me, Puss is not just a cat. It’s an honor and a privilege, in the very difficult times that we are living in, to have the capacity and the opportunity to make people laugh, all around the world. It’s a gift. For almost 10 years now, even from the beginning, Puss started having his own space, if you will, in the American pop culture and then, in the world.

I have seen the effects that the cat produces in other countries, too. Because I am from Spain, I have also the opportunity to do the character for a wider range of people, around 800 million people more, because I do the character in two versions of Spanish — one version goes to South and Central America, with its special idioms that they use for humor, and then I do a Castilian version for Spain.”

The performer shares a number of skills with his onscreen counterpart: Banderas can wield a sword (a skill he learned while portraying Zorro in two films), can hold his own on the dance floor (something he demonstrated on Broadway, as well as in movies), and he has more than proved himself able to portray the archetypal ‘Latin lover’ (in film after film after film): “I am taller, to be certain, but in many ways, Puss in Boots and I are very much alike.”

Image Courtesy of   https://www.facebook.com/Pussinboots

The article Antonio Banderas is Puss – Or is Puss in Boots Banderas? appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

The world of oscar-nominated ‘Puss in Boots‘ is populated by twisted nursery-rhyme characters, but few are as twisted as Puss’ former friend, Humpty Dumpty.

When our story begins, Puss is an orphan growing up in the small village of San Ricardo where he befriends a somewhat odd (and oddly shaped) fellow. Per director Chris Miller: “Puss would listen to Humpty’s dreams, he had all these plans, but at the end of the day, he’s just an egg.

He can barely move around; he doesn’t have the facility to really accomplish any of his goals. He was picked on and a bit of an outsider, and Puss protected him and always stood up for him. So you have Humpty the dreamer and Puss, who helps facilitate the dreams.”

They both dream of leaving the orphanage for a better life — all they need is a few magic beans to grow into a beanstalk so they can steal a fabled goose that lays golden eggs from a giant’s castle in the clouds.  Simple, really. The childhood search for the fabled beans turns up nothing, so the childish dream begins to recede…for Puss, at least, and the two begin to drift apart.

It isn’t long before the cat of action finds his true calling, when he selflessly rescues a woman from the path of a charging bull. San Ricardo quickly bestows the title of hero to Puss, which earns him his debonair hat and legendary boots (meant to stand for truth, honor and courage).

As with many duos in lore and history, once one achieves fame and fortune, jealousy is quick to follow. So when Puss agrees to help Humpty in a joint venture that goes awry (all in the name of saving their friendship,) the two are set on separate paths with quite different goals. Puss, becomes a presumed traitor to his village and everyone who trusted him, and Humpty Dumpty, becomes a bad egg, whose childhood dreams turn to thoughts of personal gain and revenge.

Not exactly the stuff of nursery rhymes, but that’s the way Chris Miller wanted it: “Humpty Dumpty is very different from what you’ve heard before — I think what we do best is take things that you think you know and push the character in a new direction, while visually trying to create something that we’ve never seen before. That is what really excites us as animation filmmakers.”

Head of story Persichetti jokes, “Doesn’t every cat have an egg for a brother? When we started working on these characters, we knew Puss needed someone to grow up with and be his foil. We thought, ‘Wow, what if he had an egg for a brother?’ It started off as a little germ like that and just took root and spread.”

Miller says, “Humpty Alexander Dumpty is played by Zach Galifianakis, and I think Zach is pretty extraordinary in the role. I love his performance; he’s incredibly funny, and his sharp extemporaneous wit is really appealing. My favorite thing about Zach in this role is the unexpected edge he brought to it.

Humpty is a bit of a damaged character, sort of broken, and he’s up to no good in a portion of the movie, but Zach brought this rationale for it: Humpty felt he was losing his best friend, which caused him to act a little funny in the head — but his heart was definitely in the right place.”

Latifa Ouaou: “We knew Zach was hilarious, but what he brought to the character of Humpty Dumpty was a vulnerability and a childlike sweetness that really made the villain multi-dimensional. You empathize with him, and that was important to us; we didn’t want him to be a black-and-white villain.”

For the comic performer, one of the challenges lay in the restrictions of the art of voicing a character. Galifianakis says, “I think one of the toughest things was trying to figure out a character with only a voice. When you start, they show you a mock-up of what the character looks like so far. And then, you have to find an attitude, and you’re limited to just using your voice.

Once the animators see you performing, like if I use my hands during a certain part, they’ll throw those in. But you really have to dig for more expression in your voice than maybe an actor would in a regular, live-action role.”

Ouaou recalls, “When we first started, we explained, ‘Yes, you’re an egg,’ and we told him that he works from the script, but that there would be changes, because we develop and produce the movie at the same time. We also wanted him to be free to work off-script. Zach really trusted Chris and just allowed Chris to guide him.

The more familiar he got with the character, the more comfortable he felt in the material, the more he started bringing his own ideas to the sessions and improvising — which is always better for the actor, for us and for the character in the end.”

Galifianakis met the “one man in a booth with a microphone” challenge head-on: “I really like the simplicity of it. I come from a standup comic background, so I’m used to that microphone and just expressing myself. That’s what I really do like about it. I remember, whenever I would leave a session, I would always think to myself, ‘This really is a great job.’ Plus the character’s been fun to explore, that kind of looseness, he’s all over the place. I’m pretty reserved as a person, so it’s fun to come in and do this ‘all-over-the-place’ kind of character.”

He also jokes, “Did I think how an egg would be? Did I research? Hmm. I should have gone to aisle seven at the grocery store and hung out with eggs, got to know them, talk to them. But, I’ve eaten eggs. I’ve thrown eggs at people that are loud on the street at two in the morning in my neighborhood.

Now that I think about it, eggs are taken advantage of in life, I think, because people eat them, they throw them—they can go bad or be deviled. Eggs are just kind of funny in general, they’re that funny shape, they’re kind of disrespected. I think this movie proves that, and maybe it will bring light to the way that eggs have been treated. Or not.”

The article Humpty Dumpty: How Zach Galifianakis Became an Egg appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

Shailene Woodley says she‘s grateful to director Alexander Payne for giving her the trust and support to navigate the bumpy terrain of merging outrageous situations with intensely real feelings in the oscar-nominated ‘The Descendants’. “Alexander is up there with a few of the favorite people I‘ve ever met in my life.

He‘s got such heart and I‘ve learned from him as a director and as a person. When he gets excited, he doesn‘t hold it in. He literally jumps up and down and talks in this funky voice and goes up and hugs people. You can‘t help but feel excited about life when you‘re around him. He possesses a great energy and definitely shows it to other people. As a director, he helped me find things about myself that I never thought I could find.”

Woodley says Payne always pushed for one bottom line; naturalism. “He might say, ‘Oh, Shai, I don‘t think that‘s natural, you would never do that in real life,’” she recalls. “That‘s how he brings out the best in people.” That kind of naturalism turned out to be easier than expected when Woodley began performing alongside George Clooney, who obliterated the intimidation factor right away.

“He turned out to be completely down-to-earth,” she explains. “He‘s kind of a goofball, always doing something silly, which kept the set light. I felt privileged not only to work with him, but to get to know him.”

Even though Matt King is trying to re-establish a connection with his kids, he finds youngest daughter Scottie a complete mystery, almost an alien life form, with whom communication of any kind is an iffy prospect. To find a young actress who could handle the humor and heartache of playing a preadolescent eccentric, Payne saw more than 300 girls from around the country.

He still hadn‘t found the right candidate with shooting about to start. That‘s when he encountered Amara Miller, a promising nine year-old newcomer from Pacific Grove, California.

He received an e-mail with her videotaped audition and recalls that “about a minute into it I just said, ‘oh that‘s her.‘ I don‘t need to see her. I knew that she was the one. I just knew she would show up. And like many things in life, she did, but in the most unpredictable way.” Adds producer Jim Burke: “Amara walked on the set like an old pro. She‘s a natural.

She‘d never been in a movie before but she was amazing.” Although she had no previous acting experience (she was once in an elementary school play but she had no lines), Miller seemed to have an instinctual feel for Scottie‘s quirkiness and uniquely uninformed role in their family adventure.

“Scottie is the one who doesn‘t know what‘s happening in the family,” she describes. “She doesn‘t know her mom is dying or that she had an affair with another man. She thinks that when they go to Kauai to find the guy that they‘re going on vacation. She‘s just running around being herself, doing what she wants, in the middle of all this stuff.”

Without much guidance from her family, Scottie has developed an almost feral quality of independence. “She‘s a trouble-maker,” laughs Miller. “She‘s one of those little girls who doesn‘t really care if she gets in trouble. She‘s still going to do fun, wild things even if she does. She has a sassy attitude.

She goes after what she needs. What Scottie needs might be time and attention, but she‘ll do anything to get it, which led to some of Miller‘s most intriguing scenes.”

“I do get to flip off George Clooney,” she laughs. “He was like ‘what?‘ His facial expression was so funny.”

For Payne, working with Miller — his first time directing a child in a major role — was no different from the adult cast. “The great thing about working with Amara is that I didn‘t have to treat her like a little girl. I could just tell she was an instinctive actress. I could just say, ‘No, do it more like this.‘ Or, ‘Please put a small pause between these two lines.‘ The way to treat people in general, and actors in particular, is to tell them the truth,” he sums up. “I was always able to do that with Amara.”

The article Defining a Family; Casting ‘The Descendants’ appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

When author of The Descendants, Kaui Hart Hemmings, found out Alexander Payne was interested in adapting her book, she could hardly believe the news. “I just about died,” she laughs. “I mean he is my favorite director, I love the kind of movies he makes.”

After discussing the adaptation of Kaui Hemmings‘s book with many screenwriters, the producers at Ad Hominem selected the writing team of Nat Faxon and Jim Rash. Wonderful actors who continue to be fixtures at the Groundling Theater, Faxon and Rash had written a much admired screenplay, ‘The Way Back’, that suggested an ability to handle shifting tones of humor and pathos as would be required by ‘The Descendants’. All who read their elegant adaptation admired it. But when he decided to direct the film himself, Payne determined that the best way for him to forge a personal connection to the material was to adapt the book himself.

In his voice, Payne turned the focus in the screenplay on two dove-tailing journeys: the King family‘s trek to Kauai on the hunt for Elizabeth King‘s unwitting lover; and the pilgrimage of diverse friends and relatives to Elizabeth‘s bedside, where she becomes, in her comatose silence, a kind of grand confessor, bringing out secrets and suppressed emotions that might not otherwise see the light of day.

“One of the many things we learned in Hawaii is that people here know their genealogy like they do in no other place,” explains producer Jim Burke. “Everybody knows when their family first arrived on the island, and some go back six or seven generations and they feel a deep, deep connection to this place. We learned all this by meeting authentic descendants who have inherited land a lot like Matt.”

Hemmings was impressed with the adaptation. “I wasn‘t concerned about Alexander changing this or that, because he really got the tone of the book and that‘s all I cared about. He got that it‘s funny and it‘s sad at the same time. I also loved that he took the time to really get to know Hawaii.”

From the beginning, Payne and the production team felt it was essential to venture far from the well-beaten tourist paths to get to know the authentic Hawaii only locals ever see. As they did so, they developed a more nuanced understanding of what the term ‘descendants’ means on an island where ancestors have always been an important link in the chain of living history.

This helped to bring into focus Matt King‘s realization that he has become disconnected from his own feelings about the land he owns — and its past and future. Payne also relied on Hemmings to serve as an insightful guide into the alluring blend of American and Hawaiian cultures that imbues island life, from its politics to its traditions and relationships. “When we came over to the islands to start making the movie, Hemmings became a really big part of it, because this is her land. She knows these people.”

“She was able to give us a reality check and at the same time, Alexander was able to run all his ideas past Kaui to make sure they seemed right for the characters,” Burke continues. “We wanted to protect her story because we believed in it.”

“Alexander‘s voice is absolutely unique,” notes Burke, who reunites with producer Jim Taylor for their fifth collaboration with Payne. “You don‘t need to be told you‘re watching an Alexander Payne movie. And yet, each of his films is also quite different. I feel like The Descendants is the most different from his previous work.

It‘s a great story with great characters, but I think the thing that sets it apart is that it is very open to interpretation: none of the characters are entirely right and none of the characters are entirely wrong. It‘s not a movie everyone will view in the same way. It‘s a film that allows the viewer to participate and connect in their own way.”

The article Adapting ‘The Descendants’; Capturing the Hawaiian Legacy appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

From Alexander Payne, the creator of the Oscar-winning ‘Sideways’, ‘The Descendants’ is set in Hawaii and follows the unpredictable journey of an American family at a crossroads.

Matt King (George Clooney), a husband and father of two girls, must re-examine his past and navigate his future when his wife is in a boating accident off Waikiki. He awkwardly attempts to repair his relationship with his daughters — 10 year-old precocious Scottie (Amara Miller) and rebellious 17 year-old Alexandra (Shailene Woodley) — while wrestling with a decision to sell his family‘s land.

Handed down from Hawaiian royalty and missionaries, the Kings own some of the last priceless virgin parcels of tropical beach in the islands. When Alexandra drops the bombshell that her mother was in the midst of a romantic fling at the time of the accident, Matt has to take a whole new look at his life, not to mention his legacy, during a week of momentous decisions.

With his girls in tow, he embarks on a haphazard search for his wife‘s lover. Along the way, in encounters alternately funny, troublesome and transcendent, he realizes he‘s finally on course toward rebuilding his life and family.

“My friends on the mainland think because I live in Hawaii, I live in paradise. Like a permanent vacation, we’re all just out here drinking Mai Tais, shaking our hips and catching waves. Are they nuts?” — Matt King.

George Clooney‘s Matt King joins the characters of Alexander Payne‘s previous films as a flawed individual finding his way through a world of lunacy, bittersweet emotion and surprises; he is neither a hero nor anti-hero. Like Matthew Broderick‘s envious teacher in ‘Election’, Jack Nicholson‘s glass-half-empty retiree in ‘About Schmidt’, and Paul Giamatti‘s muddling, middle-aged wine country tourist in Sideways, King is not the man he would like to be.

His mischievous daughters don‘t trust him, his imperiled wife has been cheating on him and his broke cousins see him and the land trust he controls as a piggy bank. To add insult to injury, he‘s surrounded by a lush, fertile, awe-inspiring landscape that defies his inner turmoil.

Yet all of this leads Matt to a tumultuous awakening that might be awkward, comical and sometimes absurd, but nevertheless changes his concept of love, fatherhood and what it truly takes to be a man. Alexander Payne has always been drawn to these peculiar situations in everyday life that can be experienced as comical, devastating and revealing all in the same breath.

When he read Kaui Hart Hemmings‘ acclaimed debut novel, The Descendants, he was immediately lured by its sharp contrasts. Here was a portrait of a man grappling with some of the worst news, most difficult people, and most impossible decisions of his life. “The novel appealed to me because it‘s an emotional story unfolding in an exotic locale,” Payne says. “It‘s a story that perhaps could be told anywhere, but what made the book for me was its completely unique setting among the landed upper-classes in Hawaii. It‘s very specific to this place, yet it is also universal.

“On a filmmaking level, it was very interesting to me because I‘ve never seen a filmic Honolulu. We see New York, Chicago, L.A., Miami and Seattle, but this is a region we never see in films. There‘s a whole distinctive social fabric to life in Hawaii and that intrigued me. I love films with a specific sense of place. I started making movies in Omaha, then I went to Santa Barbara and now I have ended up in Hawaii.”

Hemmings was able to entwine Hawaiian culture into her story of a bewildered man lurching towards redemption because she herself grew up in a not-so-conventional Hawaiian family, as the stepdaughter of well-known champion surfer and local politician Fred Hemmings, Jr.

When she started writing short stories, she began entwining themes of family, soil, history and inheritance. The Descendants began as a short story (published as The Minor Wars), which Hemmings started writing in the voice of youngest daughter Scottie, but decided to take a daring leap for a young, female writer into Matt King‘s middle-aged, male POV.

The risk changed everything. The story, and then the novel, were no longer just about a clan of fierce individualists doing their own thing but about a father learning to hang on to his family. “As soon as I switched into Matt‘s voice, the story found its rhythm,” Hemmings recalls. “There was so much at stake for him.” Those stakes gave the novel‘s title a double meaning, referring not only to King‘s comic descent but also to his discovery of what it really means to be a Hawaiian descendant and what his own descendants mean to him.

Hemmings created Matt to reflect a distinct subset of the Hawaiian populace, a generation who trace their births back to the intermarriages of white missionaries and landowners with native Hawaiian royalty and their wealth back to the spoils of the colonial Hawaiian plantation system. As Matt explains, his great-great-grandmother was Princess Margaret Ke‘alohilani, one of the last direct descendants of King Kamehameha, who fell in love with her haole (Hawaiian for white or foreign) banker, Edward King, leading to Matt‘s current life as a Honolulu lawyer with deep, tangled roots in the islands.

Like many Hawaiians, he is a hapa-haole, or half-white, who has never quite come to terms with his cultural identity. This gave Hemmings‘ novel another layer, because underneath Matt‘s worries not only about what his wife has been doing behind his back or how he‘s going to raise his daughters, but about how his life might be seen by his Hawaiian ancestors, or his own descendants.

The book, published in 2009, was an instant hit with critics, with the New Yorker praising the way — Hemmings channels the voice of her befuddled middle-aged hero with virtuosity, as he teeters between acerbic and sentimental, scoffing at himself even as he grasps for redemption.

The article ‘The Descendants’; Hemmings’ Book Suits the Screen appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.