Monthly Archives: November 2011

Nov22

Ezra Miller on ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin’: ‘I’m Half-Expecting to be Shot with an Arrow’

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Ezra Miller on ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin’: ‘I’m Half-Expecting to be Shot with an Arrow’


Ezra Miller is smart. Smarter than many adult actors in Hollywood, which is strange, since the kid is an 18-year-old high school dropout. With a penchant for ‘honest’ dark roles, Miller plays the maladjusted son in dysfunctional family flicks ‘Another Happy Day’ and ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin’ — and boy, is he convincing. Thankfully, while on the phone from New York, Miller loses all the “psycho” vibes and comes across as a thoughtful, articulate soul out to perfect his art.

The roles he tackles aren’t easy to portray (he’s been haunted by nightmares, actually), but Miller plays them like a pro. Moviefone spoke with him about his response to Columbine, playing a psychopath and getting life advice from Andy Garcia.

Dude, I have to say it. Sometimes you terrify me.
I’ve heard that before! [Laughs] I’m thankful to say that, for the most part, it’s been intentional. I haven’t started incidentally scaring children or small animals quite yet.

You’re only 18 years old, but you’ve worked with some amazing actors. Tilda Swinton, Ellen Burstyn, Ellen Barkin and Andy Garcia, just to name a few. So many other actors would kill to work with them…
Well, I have killed a bunch of people. No, but seriously, honestly… I dropped out of high school. I did that on the suspicion that I could learn everything that I wanted to learn in my craft outside of an educational institution. My suspicion was proven quite right through this unfairly fantastic education, being able to collaborate and draw from these incredible actors. It’s the high-school-dropout education of a lifetime.

Is there any particular advice from any of these actors that’s stayed with you?
One that sticks with me is from Andy Garcia, when I was 15 and working on ‘City Island.’ He was smoking a cigar and we were out by the house. He leaned over and in his Andy Garcia voice, said, “Ezra. All right. You gotta break the slate.” I nodded and pretended to understand, but then I walked away and was like “What the f**k does that mean?” He explained it later on, saying that “You have a slate that you can paint on, you can draw on it, you can make it into something. Once you’ve done that scene and you have it on a solid slate, you have to break it and start over.” He was trying to communicate with me that I can’t, especially in art, try to recreate something that’s already been done. You will have a truer and better result if you work from an internal place and start anew, rather than replicate or mimic something that you once did. It’s like when you see an old musician playing the same hits from 40 years ago.

Which is all too often.
Right. If you work from that place over and over, you get the same uninspiring result.

While your roles have similar themes, you’re not showing us the exact same role, or the exact same character. You see so many young actors doing film franchises like ‘Twilight,’ ‘The Hunger Games’ or ‘Harry Potter’ for 3, 4, 5 movies in a row. Are you glad you didn’t get your fame via that route?
I am so extremely glad. I can’t tell you. I have many friends who’ve walked the franchise tightrope, and I’ve come close to walking it myself. I only want to commit to projects of that magnitude and that length of time when it would be something really right. I need to feel the honesty in the work I do.

On the internet there’s a lot of talk that you’re going to be appearing in the ‘Akira’ remake. Is that true?
Nope.

Oh. It’s online everywhere.
That, I can assure you, will not be a reality. It’s one of those considerations that we just discussed. It’s a beautiful Japanese epic, and I think it will be a very entertaining, fun film. But it’s not my next move.

I think your search for honest roles is working for you. There’s an authenticity in your performances that you don’t often see.
Well thank you, man. It’s good to hear. Between every film, it’s like 40 days in the desert; I get a million of those scripts, those tempting deals. It’s tough, you know? Man cannot live on popcorn alone.

Your most recent roles (‘Another Happy Day,’ ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin’) deal with very dysfunctional families. You didn’t draw on your real-life experience at all for these, I hope.
Out of the many families that I’ve now explored, my family is the most wonderful, and the most functional of the lot. I come from a home where you’re constantly engaging in the struggle for honesty and acceptance. We truly hear and recognize one another. Being able to dive into these other families one at a time, I leave with a greater appreciation for my own.

You say things to your movie mothers [Ellen Barkin, Tilda Swinton] that I cannot believe. Was there any line that was particularly tough for you to give? Did you ever hallucinate and see your own mother’s face?
[Laughs] Always. I’ve been through some strange astral dances with my mother in the process of making these films, especially recently on ‘Kevin.’ Any time I would sleep, I had the same nightmare. It was Eva [Swinton], but also my real mother, and I was Kevin, but also me, if that makes sense. We’d observe these puddles… and we’d be forced to witness this horrible human aggression, this genocide in the puddles. I couldn’t see my mother during that entire shoot. I remember when the shoot was over, it seemed like I was waking up from a very long dream.

It’s not surprising that you had bad dreams after ‘Kevin.’
Yeah. We were all having nightmares. We would all wake up in the morning, look at each other and just be like, “Huhhhh. Whew. Rough one!” Every time. Every night. “Jesus! When is this shoot going to be over?” The constant barrage of the most horrible thoughts. The most horrible thoughts a person can think – I’m confident that they’ve run through my head. And sometimes, when I’m too tired to know the difference, I still think I’ve killed people. But that’s the magic, that’s the ultimate aim. Acting is a quest for the happiest insanity – the “real” of life is actually quite unreal, and the unreal, the imagined, the projected, is very real.

You were only six years old when Columbine happened. Did you try to wrap your head around the event, and if so, how did you do it?
I was a very engaged youngster, and I made attempts to wrap my head around anything that came my way. I vaguely remembered Columbine. I recall all the time afterwards more vividly, the response to Columbine. Right after it happened, there was this sentiment that swept the country where we felt the need to control our kids. To make sure it didn’t happen again, we needed to lengthen our arm of control to protect our teenage children. What that meant was metal detectors, cameras in bathrooms, security screenings, ‘Are You Going to Shoot People?’ questionnaires … to me, it always struck me as such an error – to make no effort to speak to or listen to the core place where this came from. I saw it as kids feeling that their lives were unrealistic, that there was a falsehood to it all and they were being demeaned in their environment. Their response was to create a very real event which would simultaneously destroy their environment. Talking psychologically, that’s understandable. It’s f**ked up, unbelievable, unforgiveable, all this, yes, but we also need to make an effort to understand why people do this, or else they’ll keep doing it. To further distrust kids in response to an event like that only makes them less trustworthy.

It was a very antiseptic response, almost like a distancing…
Yes! Antiseptic is a very good word. We spend so much time in this day and age wiping the little bits of dirt off of our hands, that we are so susceptible to the horrific big germs. We don’t build immunity anymore. And in keeping with this metaphor, immunity can be seen as an understanding or a system of response.

Regardless of his motivation, I wanted to kill Kevin. Like drive a car with him in it off a bridge.
That’s a fantastic idea. [Laughs] Honestly, that would have been the best thing for everyone. I’ve gotten that from a few people, even my close friends. I’m half-expecting to be shot with an arrow preemptively any day now.

The next film we’ll see you in is ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower.’ Glad to be a part of that project?
It’ll come out in spring. I can’t wait for it. It has a lightness that my other dark fare doesn’t have. I feel like there’s a lot for people in their mid-teens in the film. More than anything, when I was in that age range, I sought art that spoke to me. I’m thrilled to be involved in a piece of art that speaks directly to kids. It’s also going to be a movie that kids can actually see without parental approval or some such nonsense. It strikes that balance. It maintains the honesty and the spirit of the book, I think.

After ‘Wallflower,’ do you have any particular goals or ambitions?
My band, Sons of an Illustrious Father, just released their second album. I hope to find roads of promotion, and get back into our crazed micro school bus and start roaming the lands again.

The best times happen in microbuses.
Some of the finest hours of my life — as of yet — have occurred in one micro school bus.

Nov18

Ezra Miller marches at Occupy Wall Street

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Ezra Miller marches at Occupy Wall Street

APPEARANCES > Appearances in 2011 > Nov 17: Occupy Wall Street Protest

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Acclaimed actor Ezra Miller lent his voice to the Occupy Wall Street Day of Action.

Metro found the 19-year old chanting along the corner of Zuccotti Park at Trinity Place and Liberty Street.

“I, like the rest of my generation, have proceeded through the last decade of my life with hopelessness,” Miller said. “Truly feeling the profit motivation of this society will inevitably lead to economic despair, environmental ruin and the loss of civil liberty.”

Miller stars alongside actress Tilda Swinton in the controversial film “We Need to Talk About Kevin” based on the book with the same title. {metro.us}

Nov18

Recent Appearances Photo Update

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Recent Appearances Photo Update

APPEARANCES > Appearances in 2011 > Nov 14: “Another Happy Day” New York Screening

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APPEARANCES > Appearances in 2011 > Nov 14: “Another Happy Day” New York Screening – After Party

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APPEARANCES > Appearances in 2011 > Nov 15: “We Need To Talk About Kevin” New York Screening

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APPEARANCES > Appearances in 2011 > Nov 15: “We Need To Talk About Kevin” New York Screening – After Party

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Nov17

Ezra Miller: ‘Akira’ Remake Not ‘Next Move’

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Ezra Miller: ‘Akira’ Remake Not ‘Next Move’

So Ezra won’t be in Akira afterall. Siiigh. Thought he would have been perfect but I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what he chooses next!

Despite reports that Ezra Miller was on short list of actors testing to appear in the remake of 1990 Japanese anime film ‘Akira,’ the young actor revealed exclusively to Moviefone that he won’t be appearing in the movie.

“It’s not true,” he said in a phone interview. “That, I can assure you, will not be a reality.”

Miller has nothing but respect for the franchise, but insists that at the moment he’s not interested in pursuing that kind of role.

“It’s a beautiful Japanese epic and I think it’ll be a very entertaining, fun film, but no, it’s not my next move,” he said.

His upcoming films include ‘Another Happy Day,’ Toronto International Film Festival hit ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin,’ and the 2012 release ‘Perks of Being a Wallflower.’

On Tuesday, reports surfaced that ‘Twilight’ star Kristen Stewart has been offered the female lead role in ‘Akira.’ Other stars rumored to be part of the reboot include Keira Knightley, Gary Oldman, Garrett Hedlund and Helena Bonham Carter.

Nov16

Movieweb: Ezra Miller Talks Another Happy Day

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Movieweb: Ezra Miller Talks Another Happy Day


If you haven’t heard of Ezra Miller yet, that will surely change by the end of the year. The actor stars as Elliot, the son of Ellen Barkin‘s character Lynn in Another Happy Day, which hits theaters November 18. Ezra Miller also stars as the title character in We Need to Talk About Kevin, debuting in theaters December 9, along with the upcoming adaptation The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which debuts in theaters next year. I recently had the chance to speak with Ezra Miller over the phone about Another Happy Day, which centers on a wedding that could be a powder keg of emotions for a highly volatile family. Here’s what the young actor had to say.

Can you talk a bit about your initial reactions to the script, and what you took away from it?

Ezra Miller: Yeah. I was blown away by how many characters were fully understood within the context of a two-hour movie. Usually, you see that sort of subtlety and nuance in the understanding of a whole plethora of characters, as both antagonists and protagonists, as being human beings who are, at times, easy to identify with and, at times, impossible to understand. Usually you only see that in an extended television series, where they have time to explore each character over the course of an hour, or you see it in a really long theater production. The script, at first, it was almost like there was no narrative. There was no plot, but you found yourself in this really undefined cohesive order, falling into sympathetic grasps of each character. When I read the script, I just thought that was incredibly refreshing, because, usually within a movie, you only come to understand or identify with, one or two or three characters. Then the rest just tend to just fall into their archetypes and remain there. (Writer-director) Sam (Levinson) has this understanding of people, where the complexity of the ways and dimensions of a human being, that any character will have so many different sides, and masks, and appearances. When I first read the script, there was just something amazingly refreshing about that.

Yeah, it almost doesn’t feel like a narrative feature. It feels like this actual glimpse inside a family. That’s how real it felt, to me. It was really wonderful to watch.

Ezra Miller: The official narrative within the dysfunctional family, to this point, has been done. It’s been so explored and over-explored. It will never be fully explored, but yeah, I feel like Sam knew his own voice as sort of an alternative storyteller. That’s incredibly impressive that he was able to write the script and know, even within the way the camera moves, that you feel this omnipotent voice to Sam‘s storytelling. It moves you, I feel, compellingly through a story which, essentially, has no direct plot line.

Ellen Barkin also produced this, so she must have been on board when you were approached for this. Who else was attached when you came on? There is quite an amazing cast here, so were those people who were attached part of the draw for this role also?

Ezra Miller: It was very, very exciting to see in action. Ellen had been involved for years before I got involved and, around the time that I got involved, everyone else was kind of falling into place. I think Kate (Bosworth) had just been cast, and Ellen Burstyn had just come on board. A week later, George Kennedy and Eamon O’Rourke, who played Brandon, came on board, and everything just sort of fell into place, right around the time I jumped on. But yeah, Ellen had been involved since the beginning, and Demi (Moore) was also involved very early on.

What kinds of things did you take away from being around this much talent?

Ezra Miller: It was hilarious, man. It was like being in one of those cheesy Hollywood murals, with Elvis Presley and James Dean smoking a cigar. It was fucking amazing. I’m still not sure how I snuck my way into such a situation. It was like school, you know, college for a dropout actor (Laughs). It’s that sort of environment, especially when you have a director who, in the act of production, is still actively learning, it makes it this beautiful open learning experience for everyone. It’s actually the best way to make art, because in the given moments when artistic production is really happening, when creation is happening, there’s always something new to find. If you can approach it with that sort of receptivity, I certainly found that having a bunch of amazing old-school and new-school actors, all rallying behind the vision of this first-time director who was determined to learn everything, yeah, it became like one big school. Sometimes those school projects are the coolest pieces of art you ever make.

How would you compare Sam‘s style as a director, as opposed to other directors you have worked with? What did you really take away from working with Sam?

Ezra Miller: I think within him being a first-time director was something that will follow his style throughout his entire career, which is that every day, he was keenly aware of, in the moment, what was really interesting. Even in this world he created, this world that stemmed from his vision, he knew what was really the point of drama or the pinnacle of comedy, of that particular moment. Even though we were moving through a very tight shooting schedule, and working to form his vision within the story, he kept all of this room, this space, to be spontaneous, in what he was choosing to capture. We had these amazing experiences of being able to roll a full canister of film out on improvisation that came out of nowhere, except for what was already happening in the air of the true realizations of the characters and the family that day. I think being able to maintain a vision, while also being that wide open to what is truly popping in any given moment, that’s a style in and of itself. That made him very, very cool to work with.

I was just blown away Ellen in this. I have to watch it again, actually, just to take it all in. What was it like being in those scenes with her?

Ezra Miller: It was very intense, you know. It was a great challenge to match her nature of vulnerability, the internal justification for her anger. Essentially, there were some parts of it that were vastly complicated to approach. She had a lot of wisdom, regarding how to breathe thos complexities into life. Sometimes it would be as simple as us listening to the same Cat Stevens song before we stuck up a crazy fight scene. I think a lot of her genius is in this willingness to do whatever it takes to access a performance. She’s got this stern determination and this constant rekindling of the commitment to sacrifice for the piece of art. As Sam was responsive to the day-to-day spontaneous truths, she, as well as a lot of the other actors on this, were really determined to create them.

I was wondering if you could talk a bit about The Perks of Being a Wallflower. That’s another one with a phenomenal cast, so could you talk a bit about who you play in that, and your experiences shooting it?

Ezra Miller: Yeah. I play Patrick, who is a young man in the throes of yet another adolescent tribulation. He’s sort of a character who’s full of pride, and determined to live haphazardly, or, in other simpler words, to live. In that simple task, he’s meeting incredible resistance. There are all these challenges to his pride as a person. It’s such a beautiful movie, because it expands out to encompass, again, many different characters. In understanding them, we find these little whispers of a blueprint for how to juggle the fucking nightmare of adolescence (Laughs). All of these amazing actors were put in the same strange hotel in Pittsburgh, and we all had these specific missions that came to one big mission, to hopefully expose a little bit of that reality, through the lens of this one group of kids in Pittsburgh, in the 90s. It’s a random lens, but it’s one that is much loved by the readership of that book. Hopefully, we found even more in those characters, and just those little, true stories of how difficult it is to navigate the highs and lows of adolescence, when the highs and lows are more extreme than ever, and yet, at the same time, you have the least amount of experience and wherewithal to deal with them. It was so amazing, to be plunged into that exploration with all the talented young actors of this time. There were just so many amazing kids who I got to realize that vision with. It was very cool, man.

Finally, what would you like to say to anyone who’s curious about Another Happy Day, about why they should check it out in theaters on November 18?

Ezra Miller: Well, it’s impossible to not identify with this. I don’t know where else you’re going to be able to endeavor so deeply into dark, dramatic content, with such beautiful, comedic, levity. I think something amazing has been accomplished, in how heavy, and also how funny, this movie turned out to be.

Awesome. Well, that’s my time. Thanks so much for talking to me, Ezra. It was a real pleasure, and I really enjoyed the film.

Ezra Miller: Great. Thank you, sir.

You can watch Ezra Miller in the fantastic dramatic comedy Another Happy Day, which debuts in theaters November 18.

Nov16

Ezra @ ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin’ Screening

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Ezra @ ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin’ Screening

Ezra attended the ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin’ screening, last night, also at the Sunshine Landmark in New York City.

APPEARANCES > Appearances in 2011 > Nov 15: “We Need To Talk About Kevin” New York Screening

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“We Need To Talk About Kevin” Stars Tilda Swinton, Ezra Miller Discuss Vintage Clothing, Stylists and Consumerism

. . . Swinton’s co-star, Ezra Miller, a relative newcomer to the acting scene, who plays her son Kevin in the film also has his own sartorial preferences: “I only wear thrift store stuff and hand me downs.” While the young star looked dapper in a vintage velvet jacket (“This one came from a New York vintage store called Star Struck.”) and a flannel button down (“that was my friend’s grandfather’s”), he isn’t just being trendy with his clothing choices. Miller is making an ideological point: “See the textiles industry, designed and branded as it is, glorious and glamorous, it is actually a very bloody industry, every time I do consumer research into a given line of clothing you eventually get to something in the manufacturing of the clothes themselves, that happened in a far off place lacking human rights and environmental protection parameters.” “It’s essentially that I don’t want to spend my money,” Miller declared, “I don’t want to put it into an industry that is essentially doing wrong. It’s painful to me that we go through our interactions with the world as consumers blindly getting blood on our hands in a way we never actually have to confront.” Miller’s concern for the message his wardrobe sends to the world translates to the way he personified his character: “There’s something about the way Kevin fetishizes and pursues a state of physical discomfort and also in his refusal to allow his mother to buy him new clothes.”

Although Swinton is a bonafide fashion-plate, and Miller finds the industry despicable – the two clearly were close working on the film. Mid interview, Swinton and Miller embraced and the two even post with their co-stars in a huddle. {stylelist.com}

Nov16

Ezra @ “Another Happy Day” New York Screening

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Ezra @ “Another Happy Day” New York Screening

Ezra attended the New York screening of “Another Happy Day” on November 14th.

APPEARANCES > Appearances in 2011 > Nov 14: “Another Happy Day” New York Screening

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Another Happy Day For A Premiere

…The press wanted two people—premiere host Julianne Moore and the movie’s star Ezra Miller. Neither arrived and there was a growing feeling of impatience. Ms. Moore was delayed at a film set and wouldn’t be joining until after the screening. Mr. Miller was late too. So we waited, chatting with friends and family of the cast as well as other well-wishing art-types, none of whom knew anything about the film.

Artist turned filmmaker Julian Schabel, who was dressed in painting overalls offset with a smart jacket, spoke about the premiere he (and we) went to the previous night for My Week With Marilyn. He described Michelle Williams’s performance as “off-the-chart brilliant.”

Buoyed by the (admirably late) entrance of the star of Mr. Miller, we craned our necks to get him in view…but it was Lorenzo Martone, a mistake that we imagine has never been made before. The impersonator dodged the press when Miller himself entered the hall. Smiling and collected, Mr. Miller, who has two premieres on consecutive nights, both of which see him play a malevolent son in a complex family setup, responded with due poise to our question: Are you in danger of being typecast?

“Yes,” he said. “I think all actors are in great danger of being pigeonholed. There is an unfortunate tendency to cast an actor in a role you know he can do…I’m not happy about it.”

So what is your ideal role?

“Edgar Allen Poe, the dark years,” he said. “When I grow a moustache, I’m after Poe.”

A party at the rooftop bar of The Standard followed the quiet screening — a venue that could be seen as over the top—but celebrations of the film continued into the night with some uncharacteristically lively dancing. In the end we even learned that the lady with a crutch, who greeted us on our entrance, was in fact the mother of actress, Ellen Barkin. {Observer.com}

Nov15

W Magazine: Five Minutes With Ezra Miller

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W Magazine: Five Minutes With Ezra Miller

Anyone who has seen Ezra Miller perform in a duo of upcoming family dramas could be forgiven for feeling some trepidation upon meeting the rising indie star. In Sam Levinson’s Another Happy Day, opening this Friday, Miller plays Elliot, a recovering teenage addict with a proclivity for acid-laced barbs and self-destructive behavior. As the titular character in Lynn Ramsay’s upcoming We Need to Talk About Kevin, he embodies a devil’s spawn-like child turned anarchist adolescent who psychologically tortures his mother (Tilda Swinton) before mowing down a gym full of fellow students.

Fortunately, the only trait Miller seems to share with these troubled characters is a knack for quick-witted speech and some Freudian-Nietzschean philosophical leanings.

Here, the Hoboken-native waxes poetic on the essence of the mother-son bond, the importance of exploring dark cinematic territory, and why people shouldn’t enter into parenthood lightly.

You seem to have a penchant for dark material. Is that a fair assessment?
Yes, I would determine that to be fair.

Is that a coincidence or just the sort of thing you’re drawn to?
Coincidence, I would say, but in a way that’s cohesive and sensible in the context of what I want to explore. Sure, it’s something fairly dark, but it’s also something fairly common. We all teeter on this strange razor’s edge, and when one of us falls outside the boundaries deemed acceptable by the modern world, there’s a contradiction at play between what’s required to perpetuate the function of society—to keep trash people picking up trash and the world moving—and what’s in our innate nature. Something that’s dark is something that’s unseen; the shedding of light is simply the act of trying to understand it, and that’s what art can do.

I’m assuming you haven’t struggled with some of Elliot’s many problems: the drug addiction, the terrible family situation… How do you prepare to take on a character like that?
I really wanted to find him physically first because of how intense his sensory experience of the world is. He can’t sleep, and for anyone who’s ever suffered real insomnia, you know that when you can’t sleep your sensory experience of the world becomes even more extreme. I wanted to find that cycle.

Did you deprive yourself of sleep?
Yeah, I did. I didn’t sleep much at all on the making of this movie. Towards the beginning of film, we were putting a little bit of makeup under my eyes—towards week two we didn’t really have to anymore. I was just really tired.

He’s pretty gaunt, too. Did you stop eating as well?
I wasn’t eating a lot. I really committed to the physical emotionality of Elliot while already totally having the knowledge of what was going on with him on an emotional level. Then I just let the physicality of the character dictate the rest.

Family is at the heart of We Need to Talk About Kevin. It’s interesting that you star in these two films in which you have fractured relationships with your mother, to put it lightly.
I think it’s the most essential relationship, to speak generally. It’s the first relationship that any of us has, even if that relationship is defined by a lacking of it. It’s almost like humanity is an angry son right now. If you just look at the physical damage to mother earth right now, whether you want to see it in some sort of spiritual reality or view it as a metaphor, the earth gives us nourishment. But because of our adolescent half maturations, we think we don’t have to protect this thing that gives us life. Within that, there’s a natural cause and effect, which we already see: war between a mother and a son. Then it’s just like, who isn’t trying not to be at war with their mother? I have a fucking fantastic relationship with my mother, and that relationship is based on us both making beautiful, sweeping efforts to not be at war.

I have to say, watching both of these films made me terrified of becoming a mother. It was some pretty effective birth control.
That’s what we’ve heard! But I’ve warned people that it won’t work—do not try to watch this movie and have unprotected sex. But yeah, I feel like people should think really hard before having children in this day and age.

It sounds like you had a lovely childhood.
I had a beautiful childhood and I would very much consider having children. But I would feel better about that decision in light of having gone through these explorations, because essentially if you’re equipped with love and focus and determination to handle a Kevin or comfort an Elliot, you’re truly ready to be a mother. The world doesn’t need more people. The world needs more righteously, fully-formed people who are allowed to be anything.