In this week’s NOW, I get me a Q&A with Rutger Hauer, an actor I’ve enjoyed watching for nigh on 30 years. He’s the star of the Canadian neo-grindhouse venture “Hobo with a Shotgun”, which opens tomorrow, and if you see it, you’ll note that he’s the only cast member giving an actual performance. That’s sort of amazing, given the project.
Also, IÂ interview my first-ever member of the cast of “The Wire” — and successfully manage to restrain myself from strangling him, I hated his character so much. That’d be Tom McCarthy, who played the duplicitous Baltimore Sun reporter in the show’s fifth and final season, but who’s far better known (at least around my house) as the writer-director of “The Station Agent” and “The Visitor”. His new film, “Win Win”, opens tomorrow; Fox Searchlight brought him to town last month for a round of interviews, and we had a really great conversation about situational ethics, community morality and Paul Giamatti’s weird resemblance to Gamera the flying turtle. That last part might have been on background, now that I think of it.
Also also, Elizabeth Taylor died yesterday, and I wrote a little thing about that for the NOW site. Before anybody says anything, let me just point out that it’s almost impossible to write about Silver Age Hollywood without sounding a little like James Agee. It’s just a thing that happens, okay?
I always respected Taylor’s work in Giant. Her early scenes almost seem overacted (channeling Vivien Leigh in full fiddle-dee-dee mode) but there’s a nice natural segue from being a newlywed to being the woman of the house. Her work with James Dean in his shack was subtle and well played.