Monthly Archives: August 2012

Aug27

Ezra Covers Paper Magazine

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Ezra Covers Paper Magazine

Ezra is the cover model for Paper Magazine August-September 2012 issue! There is a brand new photoshoot by Autumn Dewilde, along with feature article – “This Is Not a Story About a Wallflower.” :D :

MEDIA > Photoshoots and Portraits > 062 – Autumn Dewilde for Paper Magazine


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This is a story about Ezra Miller, who is an actor, and also a singer, and also, in his own estimation, an artist (in the way, he hastens to add, that everyone is an artist).
By Matthew Schneier
Photographed by Autumn de Wilde
Styled by Shirley Kurata

Ezra Miller played Lincoln Center before he was a decade old and the Metropolitan Opera House not long after.

He made his name in a string of eye-catching little independent films (Afterschool; City Island), and arrived incontrovertibly with a frightening, dead-eyed performance as a budding psychopath in last year’s We Need to Talk About Kevin.

In September comes The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky’s adaptation of his own best-selling young-adult novel. With its cracked sweetness and plainspoken honesty– characteristics relatively rare in teenage popcorn flick — Perks feels like an inheritor of the John Hughes canon. Logan Lerman plays the central character, Emma Watson the romantic lead, and a supergroup of Hollywood talent (Paul Rudd, Joan Cusack, Dylan McDermott, et al.) rounds out the supporting cast. But it’s Miller, with his twitchy, galvanic performance as the irrepressible Patrick, who looks (as it might be written in a high school yearbook) most likely to walk away the breakout star..

It has already been a good few years for Miller, originally of New Jersey (“the dirty borough,” he says), currently stationed in a postwar apartment building on a side street in Chelsea. The upshot of his remarkable performance in We Need to Talk About Kevin was that suddenly Hollywood needed to talk about him. His Kevin costar Tilda Swinton loves him. So do critics. At the Cannes Film Festival, where he went with Kevin, he walked off with the Chopard Trophy, for the Male Revelation of the Year.

Revelation has been something of a Miller specialty. Though he says that “outside of art, I don’t really want to have anything to say to the mass public,” he has been steadily expressing himself to reporters — not always necessarily to his own credit — since his star began to rise. So when he brings out that, “I just started, as of a month ago, to my own extreme displeasure, being my own publicist,” it can inspire the same wry wariness as when an alleged criminal elects, lawyer-free, to mount his own defense.

Miller has invited me to his apartment to talk. He’s attended by an entourage of friends and collaborators — they’ve recently been recording music together. There are loose pages of graph paper scattered all over the floor, covered in scrawl (“DARK AGES?” is one passage I can make out), which Miller calls “planned schematics” and which have something or other to do with the Federal Reserve.

Without undue effort, Miller commands the room. His audience circles loosely around him (they’ll later trot behind him to our photo shoot), offering tea, red wine, miniature cupcakes and very occasionally, commentary. Tucked into a miniature leather armchair, Miller answers questions and offers pronouncements, occasionally cocking an ear to consider a conversation in the next room about the works of Oscar Wilde, or wandering away in a self-incited passion about the films of Shion Sono. He’s got a thick spray of black hair interspersed with grays, giant, dirty feet and the slight funk of one with loftier pursuits than diligent scrubbing. It all contributes to a kind of off-kilter charisma. Ezra Miller is not a wallflower. And it turns out not being one has its perks, too.

• • •

If you were — or knew — an adolescent in the early-aughts, there’s a decent chance you know The Perks of Being a Wallflower in its original incarnation. Chbosky’s novel openly and honestly tackled the darker issues adolescents can face: isolation, rejection, suicide and abuse. (The American Library Association placed him on its annual list of most frequently challenged authors in 2004 and 2006-09.) That’s how Miller knew it. “Read the book when I was 14,” he says. “Was totally valuable to me. Really helped me feel kind of OK about things that nobody ever still feels OK about.”

The story of high school freshman Charlie (Lerman), the titular wallflower, coming out of his shell, facing down his demons, and finding his way into friendships — like one with the gay senior Patrick — resonated with many, including Miller. So much so that when his agent called with The Perks of Being a Wallflower script, he explains, “I said that I probably was not going to want to do that.”

Why not? “Because it’s a book I really love. My immediate spark reaction was, oh my God, why are they doing that? You know what I mean? The book-reader reaction, any time you hear a film is getting made. The classic,” he grins, and winds himself up into an escalating yelp: “Noooo — no, don’t do it. Why you gonna do it? Oh no, begone! It is very legitimate and very valid to be terrified of what someone might do to someone else’s art. That’s a freaky concept.”

That was before he learned that Chbosky was adapting the book for the screen and directing it himself. “Then I was like, oh my God, that’s awesome. That sounds awesome.”

According to Chbosky, Miller was the perfect fit for the part. “Patrick was the most difficult part to cast,” he tells me. The character needs to provide both sensitive guidance and comic relief, gravity and levity. Patrick is a “merry prankster who in a devious way is the smartest kid in the school.”

Miller has a sparkplug intensity that’s hard to tear your eyes away from — so much so that it occasionally feels that his character has wandered in from another movie. There’s a little Captain Jack Sparrow to Patrick, de-pirated and sent to high school.

Life imitated art during the three-month shoot in Pittsburgh, with Miller taking on the prankster role off-set as well as on. “Patrick as the goofball ringleader,” he says, “for someone like me, that’s an easy energy to hold.” (Goofball may be a polite word for what Miller was. He and the cast stayed at a local Crowne Plaza Hotel, and “kind of ended up taking up the whole floor. A bunch of people moved out. It became an issue.”)

But he inhabited the character’s good qualities, too. “He instantly bonded with Emma,” Chbosky recalls of their time on set. “I think he just took it upon himself to become her big brother, in a sense, to become her protector. I’ll never forget how close they were when they were doing the film.” That kind of connection, and the strength it can provide in the face of adversity, is the key message of the film. “In terms of the story, everybody’s having these individual experiences; everybody has their individual shit,” Miller says. “Sometimes it’s really intense, what that shit is. You don’t often know it. But there’s a universal experience also.”

Miller’s personal experience is less universal. The born artist, son of a dancer mother and a publishing-powerhouse father, who converted to opera at five when a kindergarten teacher played his class Carmen. The high school dropout, who abandoned school at 16 after Beethoven counseled him in a dream. The burgeoning celebrity who arrives at film premieres with a plastic frog poking out of his front pocket, brandishing an antler at the assembled paparazzi. The object of fixation — some of it quite dark — for a community of young women, one of whom founded an online forum of adoration headlined “I Pray To The Church Of Ezra Miller’s Armpit Hair.” Exceptional and, yes, intense. You’re becoming a specialist in intense shit, I say.

“I don’t know,” he tells me after a pause. “That sounds like an unappealing job. But I don’t know. Things are intense.”

• • •

On set at Paper’s shoot, Miller races over to the racks of exclusively women’s clothing in which we’re going to shoot him. “Is this the height of fall fashion?” he asks the stylist, fingering a flattened felt suit by the avant-garde Japanese label Comme des Garçons whose built-in curves make it look borrowed from the wardrobe of an overweight paper doll. It is, she says. “Yesssssssssssss,” he hisses back.

Ezra is game. Game to try on women’s clothes, game to throw on a coat of lipstick. Game to produce music with his friends. Game to play gay, as Patrick is, on film — not a given, even in 2012, for a young actor — and game to take on Madame Bovary next. (He’ll play Leon, one of Emma Bovary’s lovers, and to prepare, is reading the novel for the third time. “I love Gustave Flaubert. With a burning passion. I just want to kiss him on the forehead.”) He’s game for just about whatever.

“Ezra’s crazy-ish,” says Chbosky, “in the most beautiful and benevolent way you could ever be. I really, truly believe that he can go wherever he wants to go. The only question is where he wants to go. And that’s entirely up to Ezra. He has the talent to be one of the preeminent actors of his generation. He’s also a wonderful musician. He’s also a wonderful artist. And something of a wanderer. I wouldn’t be surprised if by the end of his career, Ezra won three Oscars. Or if he ended up writing a book about his five years traveling on the roads. He’s that kind of a free spirit.”

“I’d really like to work in all artistic forms and industries,” Miller tells me, “for as long as I have legs.”

“When I say crazy-ish,” Chbosky clarifies, “what I mean is, that boy is lightning in a bottle. And I don’t know if the bottle could ever be big enough for him.”

Give a girl a good pair of shoes and she can conquer the world, the old saying goes. A boy, too, if you can find a pair of patent leather stiletto pumps in a size 13. (Miller wears the ones our stylist found in a drag boutique on Hollywood Boulevard.) So I leave Miller vamping up and down the studio in heels, clouds of smoke trailing in his wake.

And just before I go, the film’s publicist — not Miller’s, of course — has a message from Chbosky. He woke up the day after we spoke wanting to make sure, doubly sure, that I understood what he meant by crazy-ish. {papermag.com}

Aug21

Ezra for VMan Magazine

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Ezra for VMan Magazine


EZRA MILLER
Age: 20 Birthday: Sept. 30, 1992

Where were you born?
Valley Hospital, Fuckin’ New Jersey
And where do you live now?
Nowhere/NYC
How do you personally relate to your Perks character? How do you differ?
To differ from another person should never mean that one cannot relate: I differ vastly from Patrick, but I relate to Patrick infinitely.
What was the first book that you felt had a deep impact on you?
Dr. Seuss books like The Lorax, The Butter Battle Book, and Yertle the Turtle are the first books I remember as opening gaps in my baby brain for attempting to under-stand the world. I recently read The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein and was once again reminded that Dr. Seuss totally knew what was up.
Besides acting, how else do you express yourself?
At least as of right now in my life I am of the belief that the way a person lives in relation to everything else is constant self-expression. But I know what you mean, and I like to dance, sing, drum, talk like an idiot in interviews, and cook.
How did you get into the early ’90s mind-set? Is it tough playing a period piece based on a time that’s almost too recent to be properly historicized but that you weren’t a part of?
I was born the year this film takes place, so I very much grew up feeling the strange weight of this particular time for American kids, and there are some helpful consistencies in the last 20 years for sure. Culture has been sick and corrupted and kids have angstfully learned to deal with it for a very long time.
What would be your ideal role?
I’d like to play Abraham in a telling of the story of the first covenant.
What major message of The Perks of Being A Wallflower do you connect with most?
You accept the love you think you deserve.
What excites you most about a future in film and acting? What scares you most?
The film and the acting excite me the most. The press scares me the most.
What role does music play in your life?
Forgive me for sounding like a stoner hippie douche, but it would take me years to answer this question. So to keep it simple, hippie-douche it is: everything we know is com- posed of vibrations, music is the art form of intentional vibration. Literally everything is music. {vman.com}

Aug21

Ezra Miller Injured In Traffic Crash

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Ezra Miller Injured In Traffic Crash

Actor Ezra Miller is nursing an injured knee after he was involved in a traffic accident in New York City over the weekend (11-12Aug12).

The We Need To Talk About Kevin star was being driven through the city in a taxi on Sunday (12Aug12) when a fire truck crashed into the car just as it was turning onto the Williamsburg Bridge.

Miller refused to seek medical treatment and is now walking with a cane, but he is grateful the accident wasn’t more serious.

He tells New York Post gossip column Page Six, “I don’t like hospitals… I’m just using a cane for my knee… I think maybe a ligament’s maybe a little bruised up, twisted or minorly fractured. It’s definitely not torn because I’m not in that much pain. I felt lucky I didn’t get more hurt or die.” {contactmusic.com}

This accident was before Ezra’s appearance at the Lawless screening. Guess the cane wasn’t just an accessory after all. Feel better soon Ez!

Aug20

Perks of Being a Wallflower Set Visits

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Perks of Being a Wallflower Set Visits

Exclusive Set Visit & Cast Interview: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

EZRA MILLER

Interviewer: What do you like about this particular character? What do you relate to?

Ezra Miller: I like how, just like vivacious and unapologetic and proud he is. And I like more than anything that he is a real, sympathetic individual and that—despite the fact that the character is gay—that plays really no part in the formation of the human being. I think—I think there’s a—a certain unfortunate—well in the process of this particular—the story telling industry coming to regard gay/queer/bi/trans people on any level, there’s this threat—as there’s been with any demographic coming onto the screen of tokenization essentially—and that’s certainly been happening with gay characters in film—is that, yeah, they become token gay characters because now that’s—that’s expected in media. But Patrick—I just remember reading Patrick and realizing that, ‘oh no. This character has no basis in being gay’—that he’s a fully formed being and that is an aspect of him, as is an aspect of us all. Our sexuality—it’s not the defining quality. It’s just one element.

Interviewer: Did you specifically go after Patrick or did they come to you and were you looking at several different characters?

Ezra: Patrick—when I read the script, the script was sent to me with Patrick’s name on it as the character to read and reading the script, it was—it was very clear that that would be the character that—that that should be the character that God willing please … give me this character!

Interviewer: Did you ever think about playing Charlie?

Ezra: No. I—it’s funny because when I read this book I was 13 years old and I very much, you know, when a 13 year old boy reads that book, you’re identifying with Charlie. And so, initially, there was many some sort of thought of like, ‘oh, I like—that’s the character that I remembered most immediately’ but no. When the script came around, I—it was Patrick and it had to be. No, no, never a real consideration of wanting to play Charlie. And when—when I got the script, Logan-the-Ultimate-Baller-Champion-Lerman was already attached so that was just sort of a thrilling obvious thing. And at that time, there was no way to possibly expect what he was going to do with his character and I already trusted him fully.

Novel Novice: The book has such a strong following amongst it’s like fans and readers. Do you feel any pressure from that group? I mean, when you’re working or do you try to just ignore it?

Ezra: What I feel is a great honor and a great privilege to be able to be involved in something that is so—of such deep seminal importance for my generation. And no, I don’t feel a pressure. I feel a necessity which, as an artist, is what—is what I want. I think—yeah—necessity is the mother of all invention. Like, we need—as artists—we need that mother to validate our actions. If we can—if we can find the necessity then it’s a lot easier to find the tools. And yeah, the very wonderful relationship between the readers of this book and this project—it’s only—it’s a happy flame beneath us. It’s not some sort of massive something that threatens to crush us. Or at least that’s how I felt. I’ve just felt sort of spurred on by the fans, not deterred or intimidated.

Interviewer: In the book, Patrick and Sam have this deep connection so how has it been working with Emma and establishing that connection?

Ezra: Oh man. Far too easy! Unjustly easy! They should’ve thrown me someone a little harder to handle so it could’ve been a bit of a challenge. You know, Emma’s one of the most severely mind-blowing forces of my peer group in acting right now and I think—I think based on what’s come before this, people just have no idea. You know, no idea what she’s capable of. She has become in these short weeks one of my dearest friends—I think that will be the case forever and she is the type of artist who is going to make her true self known in time and I personally look forward to watching an entire population of Harry Potter fans get their minds twisted into small, pretzel-ish knots over what this girl can do. That’s exciting to me. [Laughs]

Interviewer: Were you one of those Harry Potter fans before signing onto this movie?

Ezra: Can’t talk about this, man![Laughs]

Yes. Massive. Massive. Read Harry Potter like scripture or something. I—I—yeah. When I was a kid, I did—I had a ritual which in hindsight makes me look like an unhealthy, unattended kid, which was that—yeah. I must’ve listened to each of the Jim Dale voice recordings of the Harry Potter books maybe like a couple hundred times each. And that means like putting in the hours everyday, and that’s what I did after school, was just like listen to those books on repeat. You know, here’s what it—here’s what I essentially believe. Here’s what—something that’s very exciting about Emma—truly being such a magical artist—is that, that book [Harry Potter] strikes a core of human beings all around—all over this world. Those books do for a very specific reason—which is that like, we all feel innately that we are capable of very, very, very wonderful, magical things and that’s not validated in this culture—in this society—and thus the, you know, the ratio of people who are actually acting upon these abilities that we have I feel like gets smaller and smaller and—but, you know, the reality is that we have those capabilities and that, you know, Emma—who plays Hermione Granger—has those capabilities as an artist. She is what we look at and say ‘magician.’ [Laughs] You know? She is that. So yeah, Harry Potter was important for me but fortunately it’s been—it hasn’t even crossed my mind at any point working with Emma. No, not even for a second because she is quite her own entity. {novelnovice.com}

‘Perks of Being a Wallflower’: What We Learned on Set

Adapting a beloved, obsessed-over novel is never easy, but it’s infinitely interesting when the person doing the adapting is also the author of that beloved, obsessed-over novel. That was the case for September’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and thanks to a quick trip to Pittsburgh, where Emma Watson, Logan Lerman, and Ezra Miller were filming the flick, Hollywood.com got a look at what that process looks like.

It was a muggy, overcast Pittsburgh day when myself and a group of journalists piled into a van and made our way to Peters Township High School, where Watson, Lerman, Miller, Mae Whitman, Nina Dobrev, Dylan McDermott, and Kate Walsh were filming their characters’ high school graduation under the watchful eye of writer/director Stephen Chbosky. From the sound of Watson’s surprisingly accurate American accent peeping through our headphones when filming began, to the fake snow puddled around the wheels of a school bus for another scene, the high school was all movie set. But from the crowds of local teens set up as extras, the proliferation of red and white balloons all over the football stadium, and a general air of excitement, Peters Township was all high school. The setting couldn’t have been more perfect — after all, Pittsburgh and its surrounding suburbs are where Chbosky grew up and where his novel takes place.

In case you were not a teen in 1999, it might be news to you that The Perks of Being a Wallflower was a life-affecting book for many of its stalwart fans. It follows the story of a young, socially-challenged teenager named Charlie (Lerman, in the film) and is told through a series of his letters. After enduring the aftermath of his friend Michael’s suicide, Charlie seeks refuge with two seniors, Sam (Watson) and Patrick (Miller). The candidly mature book is sure to beget a similarly dark film that fully explores Charlie’s introvert nature, variant issues regarding sexuality, and the very foundations of friendship itself, but what fans are really worried about is how closely Perks will resemble the book they all loved. While my experience of the set was largely joyous, as the scene at hand was filled with all the jubilance that goes with a graduation, the actors and director assured us that the film doesn’t stray far from its darker, contemplative roots.

It was at this school, hand-picked by Chbosky and nestled among rolling green hills, where we learned a few valuable lessons about the film.

1. The movie is not an exact translation of the book, but it is faithful.
For fans who worry that the film won’t match up their expectations, we offer Chbosky’s original intentions for the story: “I’ve wanted to make this movie—I first thought of the title of the movie twenty years ago this fall. The title of the book and movie. And so, I always felt it would probably be both,” he said in the library of Peters Township High. In fact, Chbosky says there are very few changes from the book, aside from the aspect of telling the story through letters only.

”I wrote the book as a series of letters because I wanted the reader to feel very intimately connected to Charlie. So, it was finding a point of view from the film that would lead to the same connection. And luckily, with Logan Lerman, it’s not very difficult to get that sense of connection,” said Chbosky.

But it’s not just the element of translating the book for film. Chbosky used a few locations in his hometown of Pittsburgh that meant a great deal to him as a teen, adding a layer of realism. For a scene that takes place during a showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show, the film makes use of the first place Chbosky ever saw the play, as well as a few other spots that are meaningful to the writer/director. “And so, going back there, twenty-five years later, was incredibly meaningful. I loved it. I love filming here at Peters Township. I love filming at Kings, where my parents eat breakfast three times a week. Where else?” he said. It doesn’t get much more authentic than filming a movie about adolescence in the place where the writer grew up.

2. ‘90s fashion a huge part of the film. And it’s awesome.
Mae Whitman, who plays Mary Elizabeth in the film, gets to rock the ‘90s punk look, so much that the costume designer admitted he was afraid she’d steal her wardrobe. And she’d have good reason. “[Costumes are] such a fine part of creating a character, but also letting the actor think they’re creating the character as well, and being comfortable with that. And [our designer] really did an amazing job,” she said. But it wasn’t simply a one-way process.

Watson told Hollywood.com that many of her wardrobe pieces were her own, but she was intimidated by her character Sam’s need for “great style.” (Right, like Watson could ever want for a stylish air.) “A lot of the clothes are actually my clothes. I’m actually wearing one of my grandmother’s dresses, which I got altered … Sam’s style is very interesting. There’s a couple of looks that have been interesting for me to wear, because they’re very all-American. I’m like, ‘Wow, if my friends could see me now,’” she giggled.

3. Yes, the cast really are best friends.
“I can’t put one as like, being my best friend on the shoot. I love all these guys. [We’re] really close friends now,” said Lerman. And it showed. Every second in between shooting, the entire cast, from Watson to Lerman to Dobrev and Miller, were joking with each other and palling around like they’d actually survived the terrifying high school experience together.

4. And they all L-O-V-E Emma Watson.
Seriously. Every single actor, crew member, and Chbosky himself couldn’t stop gushing about the former Hermione Granger. “She’s blowing people away with her performance,” said Lerman. And Miller had so many wonderful things to say, we have to off-set it in its entirety:

”They should have thrown me someone a little harder to handle so it could have been a bit of a challenge. Emma’s one of the most severely mind-blowing forces of my peer group in acting right now. Based on what’s come before this, people just have no idea what she’s capable of. She has become in these short weeks one of my dearest friends. I think that will be the case forever. And she is the type of artist who is going to make her true self known in time. I personally look forward to watching an entire population of Harry Potter fans get their minds twisted into small pretzel-ish knots over what this girl can do.”

5. …And Harry Potter.
Like everyone else in the world, the cast of Perks are Harry Potter nerds. Whitman even puts the series on par with her first love: “I guess it would be either that or food. Just food in general. The two things I love the most are Harry Potter and food.” And of course, not to be outdone, Miller professed his love for the series like only he can: “I read Harry Potter like scripture … that book strikes the core of human beings all over this world for a very specific reason, which is that we all feel, innately, that we are capable of very, very, very wonderful, magical things.” Alright, who feels like giving the series another read right about now?

6. Emma Watson is a total rebel.
One of the most iconic scenes from the book involves a rather dangerous stunt in a car driving through a tunnel, but it’s something most famous actors probably wouldn’t risk. Watson isn’t most famous actors. “I was not meant to do it at all. I begged Stephen … I ended up doing it like, seven or eight times. The car was going fifty or sixty miles an hour,” she said as we all waited with baited breath. “I had one string. Hands in the air, all the way through the tunnel, coming out the other end. The first time I did it, I was so emotional, I cried. I was really, really special. And seeing the shot, what it’s going to look like—it’s going to blow your mind. I don’t want to build it up too much, but it’s stunning.”

7. Logan Lerman is more perfect for Charlie than you might think…
Charlie’s social awkwardness is a reason many young readers identified so greatly with the book, and luckily for them, Lerman did too. “I guess I wasn’t as naïve as him, but I definitely had the morals that he has … A lot of the experiences, or a lot of the situations in the script, have actually happened to me in life, so I just connected with him,” said the actor.

8. Ezra Miller is very proud of his beloved character.
Miller’s character Patrick is iconic for many readers in that he is openly gay and struggling with the close-minded world’s reaction to something that’s so inherently a part of his identity. Still, Miller insists that Patrick may identify himself as gay, but it doesn’t define him. “I remember reading Patrick and realizing, ‘Oh no, this character has no basis in being gay,’” he said. “He is a fully-formed being, and that is an aspect of him. As it is an aspect with us all (our sexuality). It’s not a defining quality. It’s just one element,” Miller added.

9. We wish we were in this movie.
Watch any preview or scene from Perks and it’s obvious the actors were having a great time working together. But for them, it was more than that. They were taking part in something that Chbosky has been building up to since he was a teenager. And that element really made the film an incredible experience for the young actors, especially Watson. “[Stephen] really cared about all of us having a good time. He said that at the beginning: ‘I want you to have the summer of your lives.’ And I absolutely did,” she said, with a grin that stretched from ear to ear. {hollywood.com}

Emma Watson: ‘Perks of Being a Wallflower’ Set Visit Report!

JustJared.com ‘Perks of Being a Wallflower’ Set Visit

When we stepped out onto the set of The Perks of Being a Wallflower on a warm summer morning at Peters Township High School on the outskirts of Pittsburgh, filming was already underway for the day. The cast and crew had been working on the flick for the past couple months and were nearing the end of the shoot. As we would later observe, the cast had formed extremely close bonds with each other while working on the film adaptation of one of the most beloved coming-of-age stories of recent years.

“The shooting schedule’s been kind of crazy and it’s such a great group of people and we’ve all got so close that we mainly just hang out at the Crowne Plaza [the hotel the cast and crew stayed in during the shoot],” Emma Watson told us. “I’m serious. And we play music and pretty much everyone as part of the cast is musically talented in some way so we spend most of our evenings playing music and just talking and just being silly.”

Emma is taking on the pivotal role of Sam in the film, the main love interest of the story’s lead character and the person who encourages him to be himself. While working on the Harry Potter films for most of her childhood until her adult years, she was looking for a film to break out into a new type of role.

“I’d been reading scripts after the fourth Harry Potter movie around the age of 15, 16 and just really didn’t read anything that I really just loved instantly and then… I read Perks of Being a Wallflower,” Emma said. “I was incredibly moved by it and just instantly knew that the movie had to be made and that I had to play Sam. I really wanted to play Sam and was just really drawn to her so and then when I met with Stephen [Chbosky], we just instantly clicked and it felt like I was meeting an old friend and then I met with Logan [Lerman] and I knew he was the perfect Charlie and it was just a really obvious, obvious choice for me.”

Just like when she worked on Harry Potter, Emma had the author of the source material on hand to answer any questions, but she was able to take it a step further with Stephen and create a new vision for the character. “I’m a little bit OCD in that I like to know. I realized this with Hermione, is that I was such a big fan of the books. I knew everything, I mean I’m like a Harry Potter diction read, I could tell you everything and anything and I wanted to be like that about this movie too,” Emma said. “[Stephen]’s right there for you to quiz, anytime I want to ask him anything and he can create new dialogue with me on the spot and we can adapt and that’s been the great thing about him too is that he’s realized that he is making something new.”

Logan Lerman, who is playing the film’s lead role Charlie, had a similar connection to the book as Emma. “I was very similar to Charlie in many ways growing up. And I just really responded to the material. It was just an instant understanding and I just knew that I had to play the part,” he said.

Growing up, Logan was a big Harry Potter fan, as were many other members of the cast, and thought it was great to work with Emma. “It’s really exciting to see her outside of the series and what she’s able to do. She’s not only pulling it off, but she’s blowing people away with her performance,” Logan said.

Ezra Miller might take the cake for the biggest Potter fan out of the cast though.

“Massive [fan]. Massive. [I] read Harry Potter like scripture or something. I—I—yeah. When I was a kid, I did—I had a ritual which in hindsight makes me look like an unhealthy, unattended kid, which was that—yeah,” Ezra said. “I must’ve listened to each of the Jim Dale voice recordings of the Harry Potter books maybe like a couple hundred times each. And that means like putting in the hours everyday, and that’s what I did after school, was just like listen to those books on repeat. You know, here’s what it—here’s what I essentially believe. Here’s what— something that’s very exciting about Emma—truly being such a magical artist— is that, that book strikes a core of human beings all around—all over this world. Those books do for a very specific reason—which is that like, we all feel innately that we are capable of very, very, very wonderful, magical things and that’s not validated in this culture—in this society—and thus the, you know, the ration of people who are actually acting upon these abilities that we have I feel like gets smaller and smaller and—but, you know, the reality is that we have those capabilities and that, you know, Emma—who plays Hermione Granger— has those capabilities as an artist. She is what we look at and say ‘magician.’ [laughs] You know? She is that. So yeah, Harry Potter was important for me but fortunately it’s been—it hasn’t even crossed my mind at any point working with Emma. No, not even for a second because she is quite her own entity.”

Ezra recently opened up about his sexuality in an interview with Out magazine and he delved into the details of his character’s sexuality for us.

“I like how, just like vivacious and unapologetic and proud he is. And I like more than anything that he is a real, sympathetic individual and that—despite the fact that the character is gay—that plays really no part in the formation of the human being,” Ezra said. “I think—I think there’s a—a certain unfortunate—well in the process of this particular—the story telling industry coming to regard gay/queer/bi/trans people on any level, there’s this threat—as there’s been with any demographic coming onto the screen of tokenization essentially—and that’s certainly been happening with gay characters in film—is that, yeah, they become token gay characters because now that’s—that’s expected in media. But Patrick—I just remember reading Patrick and realizing that, ‘oh no. This character has no basis in being gay’—that he’s a fully formed being and that is an aspect of him, as is an aspect of us all. Our sexuality—it’s not the defining quality. It’s just one element.”

Mae Whitman, who plays Mary Elizabeth, told us that if she were to make a fanzine like her character would, she most likely would end up doing it about Harry Potter, just like her other castmates!

“Is it taboo to say Harry Potter? [laughs] Considering the relationship I now have with Emma. Um, I mean that’s definitely one of the things I’m the biggest fan of. Or like Lord of the Rings or comic books. Really big nerd. So ya, I guess it would be either that or food. Just food in general. Two of the things I love the most are Harry Potter and food. It’s tough to choose, or maybe I could combine them somehow,” Mae said.

Mae and Emma both had a blast exploring the style of their characters. Mae even credits costume designer David C. Robinson for getting her to enjoy wearing heels!

“David’s a genius, like he’s literally a genius. And as far as wardrobe designer, he’s one of the best there is, he’s done so many amazing movies. And it’s such a fine art of like creating a character, but also letting the actor think they’re creating the character as well and being comfortable with that. And he really did an amazing job, I mean, I have not worn shoes that are under five inches, like literally. And at first, I’ve never, you will never catch me in heels unless it’s like an event and my publicist is forcing me to. But I think I’m gonna start trying them out, I kind of like them actually. But ya, I mean, the list is too long. I’ll be stealing every dress and everything that I can possible get my hands on,” Mae said.

Emma went so far with creating the look for Sam that she ended up wearing some of her own outfits for the film!

“The cool thing about Sam is that she walks that line between a little bit rocky, but then also she is kind of like a bit preppy and she also is kind of like humorous with her style a little bit as well and she kind of does a little bit of everything, she’s quite eclectic. That was one of Steve’s first notes, he’s like, “she has great style, great attitude, great taste.” So, I mean no pressure, when I walked into costume I was like alright guys this has got to be amazing. A lot of the clothes actually are my clothes that I brought in so I’m actually wearing one of my grandmother’s dresses, which I got altered from like the 80s and I don’t know it’s interesting. I think Sam’s style is interesting,” Emma said.

One of the funniest moments during our time on set came while we spoke to Nina Dobrev. Unbeknownst to us and the other journalists on set, Emma and Ezra decided to dance around in the background and try to make Nina laugh, but she didn’t break at all! Nina said that moments like that were some of her favorite while working on the project.

“Just right now what happened. [laughs] There have been so many moments. This has been like a really light, fun… well, actually, no. All the scenes that I’ve been doing have been dramatic and like sad and heavy. But the set and the people are really cool and we’ve had a lot of really great moments. I don’t know if that’s specifically shooting wise but just in general, this experience has been awesome,” Nina said.

Nina spent her summer going back and forth from working on The Perks of Being a Wallflower to the set of her show The Vampire Diaries. She told us that she’s not intimidated to be taking on a role for a project with a cult following after tackling her role on TVD. One thing that may confuse people though is that her character doesn’t have a name in the book, so they added one for the movie! Nina plays Candace, the sister to Charlie (Lerman).

“It’s funny, a couple of my friends called me and their like, “we read the book but Candace isn’t in it, like who are you? Like you‘re not in it” [laughs] And on The Vampire Diaries there’s a couple characters that weren’t in the book that were just invented for the TV show. So a lot of people had to connect the dots,” Nina said. “But, when you give someone a name, it’s almost easier to judge them. If that makes sense. And I think that’s part of why Stephen, in the books, wrote mom, dad, sister, brother. He wanted it to be left open for interpretation. He didn’t want judgment, he wanted a real opinion that was genuine and honest with it.”

We couldn’t leave set without chatting with Stephen Chbosky, the mastermind behind the book and the film. He left us with a final note about why kids and teenagers today in a world connected by Facebook and cell phones are going to want to watch a story about teens who connected in a totally different way.

“The elements that I think will bring them in is a love story, and a story about a family of friends, and families that are relatable to them, not these fictitious families where parents are complete idiots. You know, let’s face it, it really isn’t true. It’s fun in movies but it’s not true. What I think will bring them in is recognizing themselves and their friends, regardless of whatever devices in their hand or however they choose to communicate,” Steve said.

It was a long journey for Stephen to adapt his novel into a film and he calls it “as cliché as it sounds, it’s a dream come true.” When he wrote the book, he envisioned it as a movie, so we are glad to see that his dream of bringing it to the big screen has finally come true!

Make sure to check out The Perks of Being a Wallflower on September 21 in limited release and stay tuned to JustJared.com as we roll out more quotes from our interviews with the cast! {justjared.com}

The Perks of Being a Wallflower Set Visit: The Cast Talks Harry Potter and Living Up to the Book

The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and when I was invited to the set of the film adaptation with a few other reporters, I was eager to talk to her about taking on one of her first post-Harry Potter roles (and using an American accent). We visited the high school set of the film, which is a coming-of-age tale about a boy, Charlie (Logan Lerman), who struggles with depression but finds a group of friends who make him feel accepted. I’m a huge fan of the book, so I was happy that everything I saw indicated that the movie will live up to its beloved source material. Director Stephen Chbosky is also the author of the novel, so each decision was painstakingly made, beginning with the setting of Pittsburgh, where the book takes place. On set, we chatted with a few of the cast members, including Lerman, Watson, Ezra Miller, and Mae Whitman. Read on for what they said about the movie — and how excited Emma’s costars were to be working with her — and stay tuned for the full interviews from the stars.

 

Have you read the book, and do you feel pressure to live up to it?
Emma Watson: I read the script first and then I read the book. It was so funny because I read the script and I came back to Brown and I told my roommates that I’ve just read this amazing script, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and my friends were like, “Oh, that’s my favorite book. So jealous that you get to play Sam. If I was ever going to be in a movie, if I was ever going to play any character ever, it would be Sam.” I didn’t realize, but similarly to Harry Potter, the books really have this cult following, so that was really interesting, but the response that I get from people who have read the book and really identify with it is pretty intense. It’s kind of amazing to be part of another movie product again that has so much love for it in the same way that Harry Potter does.

Ezra Miller: What I feel is a great honor and a great privilege to be able to be involved in something that is of such deep seminal importance for my generation. And no, I don’t feel a pressure. I feel a necessity, which, as an artist, is what I want. I think necessity is the mother of all invention. We need — as artists — that mother to validate our actions. And yeah, the very wonderful relationship between the readers of this book and this project, it’s only a happy flame beneath us. It’s not some sort of massive something that threatens to crush us. Or at least that’s how I felt. I’ve just felt sort of spurred on by the fans, not deterred or intimidated.

Mae Whitman: I read the book a while ago — a few years ago and then, actually, some friends that are on Parenthood with me — Miles [Heizer] and Sarah [Ramos] — it’s their favorite book too, so when it started coming back in periphery, I reread it and we all just would talk about it every day, and it’s such a seriously special, meaningful book. Like, it means something to everybody that’s read it, so to be a part of something like that is really special, and because the people who tell you that they appreciate it really mean it from a really visceral place.

How did you get your accent to play Sam?
Emma Watson: I worked with a dialect coach before the movie. I’d rather give a really good performance — obviously I’m hoping that my accent is going to be perfect — but I kind of didn’t want that to take over too much. My other castmates have been incredibly supportive; if I ever need to check anything, I’m just like, “Say this,” and then they’ll say it and I’ll be like, “OK, thanks,” and that will be it. So, it’s been easy.

What is it like working with Emma Watson?
Logan Lerman: She’s great. She’s really a great person and easy to work with and a fantastic actress. [I am] a big fan of Harry Potter. Yeah, it’s really exciting to see her outside of the series and what she’s able to do. She’s not only pulling it off, but she’s blowing people away with her performance.

Ezra Miller: Emma’s one of the most severely mind-blowing forces of my peer group in acting right now, and I think based on what’s come before this, people just have no idea what she’s capable of. She has become, in these short weeks, one of my dearest friends — I think that will be the case forever — and she is the type of artist who is going to make her true self known in time, and I personally look forward to watching an entire population of Harry Potter fans get their minds twisted into small, pretzel-ish knots over what this girl can do. That’s exciting to me.

Mae Whitman: I’ve read every [Harry Potter] book, like gotten them at midnight when they came out, and dressed up. I mean, it was definitely a big deal. I slowly release tidbits to her about how excited I am, but I don’t want to let it all come at once. I think she’d get a restraining order or something.

How does the movie differ from the book?
Logan Lerman: They definitely had to trim out some of the details and then make it a little bit neater for for the movie, I mean, just to fit it into a film. But, you know, Steve Chbosky — who wrote the novel, wrote the script — is directing it, so it’s very true to the book, and I think the fans of the book are going to be really happy with what Steve has created. {buzzsugar.com}

Aug16

Ezra for Out Magazine

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Ezra for Out Magazine

Ezra posed with his male Perks of Being a Wallflower co-stars Logan Lerman and Johnny Simmons for the September issue of Out Magazine. There is an excellent new article and photoshoot set.

MEDIA > Photoshoots and Portraits > 060 – Kai Z Feng for Out

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Lost and Found

Long before “It Gets Better,” there was ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower,’ a young adult novel that became a touchstone for a generation. Can the movie follow suit?

Photography by Kai Z Feng
Styling by Grant Woolhead

There are certain pieces of adolescent mythology that can almost become a necessity, like a lifeline for a kid,” Ezra Miller says. “Perks was that for me.”

Perks is how kids like Miller, wounded teens who barely made it out of high school alive, refer to their tattered copies of The Perks of Being a Wallflower, a novel about Charlie, an achingly lost and lonely high-school freshman and the older band of outsiders — —Sam, the out-of-his-league girl, and her confident gay stepbrother, Patrick — who help save him.

To a decade’s outcasts, Perks belongs on a shelf next to The Catcher in the Rye. It pays tribute to that classic indictment of adult hypocrisy, but also tells an updated, unflinching, uncensored story about how many childhoods were not so much the setting of a happy home video as they were fodder for a future PostSecret confession.

“I read this book when I was Charlie’s age,” says Miller. Two older friends who lived down the block from him in Maplewood, N.J., insisted on it. “One said, ‘This is my favorite book.’ The other said, ‘This book saved my life.’ So I read it and I found one of the best mythological maps for being a fucked-up kid.”

That kind of emphatic, evangelical endorsement is how a book like Perks, written by Stephen Chbosky and published in 1999 by MTV Books, ended up being passed around from kid to kid and selling more than a million copies. It’s still one of the most banned books in America, which only serves to heighten its appeal.

The film adaptation­ — starring Logan Lerman (Percy Jackson & the Olympians, Greg Berlanti’s Jack & Bobby) as Charlie and Harry Potter’s Emma Watson as Sam — hits theaters this month, with a screenplay written and directed by Chbosky.

Five years after finding solace in the character of Charlie, Miller — who is now on the cusp of turning 20 and finally, officially, graduating from his own teenage years — plays Patrick with a beautiful, transcendent self-assurance that recalls the sensitive bravado of a young Johnny Depp. Best known as Tilda Swinton’s sociopath son in 2011’s We Need to Talk About Kevin, Miller turns the role of Patrick into a defiantly optimistic new queer role model.

“I needed Patrick in my life,” says Chbosky, who was 26 when he wrote Perks. “I needed a person who was OK with himself. I looked up to Ferris Bueller because he didn’t seem to be plagued with the insecurities that plagued me. And then—because I did the movie much later, when I was not as crazy—I recognized that Patrick had become something of an iconic character.”

When Miller found the script for Perks at a friend’s house in Los Angeles, “I picked it up and threw it against the wall, then I kicked it and spat on it — because I was furious that somebody, some idiot somewhere was trying to ruin a great piece of literature.” Then he found out it was Chbosky’s project: “It was no longer Hollywood eating another thing we love. It was maybe a chance for Perks to become a bigger, friendlier, more helpful monster.”

He also realized it was time to stop thinking of himself as Charlie. “Here I am, the age that my friends were when they were recommending the book to me.” As the de facto leader of the school’s “antipack pack,” as Miller calls it, Patrick shows Charlie how to be himself amidst the bullies instead of just standing on the sidelines.

“Top to bottom, I wanted to make a movie where Patrick was the coolest kid—the most self-assured, the least haunted,” Chbosky says. “God knows he has some problems”—the only secret Patrick keeps is that he’s sleeping with the closeted quarterback, Brad—“but you know that he’s going to be OK. If you’re a gay kid and you’re looking for role models like everybody else, there he is. There’s no victim here. And if you’re a straight kid, you’re just going to love Patrick because he’s cool.”

In Perks, after Brad (Johnny Simmons) is savagely beaten by his father when he catches him with Patrick, a forlorn Patrick drunkenly kisses Charlie. Rather than the tired trope of an offended, disgusted reaction, Charlie just hugs Patrick sweetly, with unconditional reassurance.

“Of course there’s nothing wrong with it,” says Chbosky, who says the scene — and much of both Patrick’s and Brad’s characters — was inspired by his best friend at college. “Even though I’m a straight guy, I’d always had a real kinship with all of my gay friends.”

Long before “It Gets Better,” there was ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower,’ a young adult novel that became a touchstone for a generation. Can the movie follow suit?

Lerman, 20, says he and his generation of friends would respond like Charlie, too. “It’s not offensive — not at all. And Charlie just cares about Patrick so much, it’s just instinctual for him to accept everyone for who they are.”

Not so sweet is a scene in which Brad calls Patrick a faggot in the middle of the lunchroom. “In these movies, so often the gay teen gets called a name and he feels bad and he walks away,” Chbosky says. “Being where I’m from — and I’m speaking like a guy from Pittsburgh now — I said, ‘In this story, I want Patrick to turn around and hit that guy so hard.’ ”

After that first punch, Miller and Simmons — who plays Brad with a quiet agony, in stark contrast to Patrick’s audacious abandon — grapple on the cafeteria floor in a brutal, intimate fight. There were no stand-ins and, in secret agreement, they used far more force than either the stunt coordinator or Chbosky had approved.

“Johnny and I would have it no other way,” Miller says. “We really did not want the fight to become something safe or something easy. We just recently admitted to each other that we both took somewhat serious injuries that day.”

“Brad is the one person who doesn’t escape from the boundaries that have been set by what people want of him,” Simmons says. “The tragedy of Brad is that he didn’t become who he really is; he lived up to his image. This movie was my small way of saying, ‘This is insane. This is ridiculous.’ ”

Miller says, “I really think that most violent confrontations are just dudes repeating cycles of abuse from their fathers or testing their own machismo. It’s more of a weird homoerotic animal ritual than anything else. If you look at two dudes who are about to fight, it just looks like they’re going to fuck.”

Like Patrick, Miller, in his hippie heart, is a lover, not a fighter, and he wears his weirdness like a peacock’s plume. “Getting socially outcast can be the best and most informative thing that can ever happen to you,” he says, “because you have to learn who you are separate from the pack.”

As a young child, Miller was mocked for having a speech impediment, which he learned to control by singing opera. (He was in New York’s Metropolitan Opera Children’s Chorus and the premiere of Philip Glass’s White Raven.) “I was trying to kiss boys in school,” he says, and then the best friend he fooled around with turned on him. “He had some macho realization that led him to believe that I was the problem. So I went from having a stutter to being a totally gay little opera singer to being, like, a really confused queer adolescent.”

One of the older kids who introduced him to Perks became his girlfriend, but once she graduated, Miller felt like an outcast again. “[Bullying] does come with the territory of being a lesbian/gay/bi/queer/trans person in the public school system. And that’s been getting a little bit better, for parts of that spectrum, but not really. How far have we really come? I’m not sure. That’s up for debate.”

He left high school at 16 to act full-time and points to the making of this film as a kind of second chance at acting out his adolescence. “I didn’t get scapegoated,” he says, with tender surprise. “I wasn’t the oddball. All of the other kids who made this film are super weird, also! I’ve never been accepted like that, outside of, like, fucking Burning Man.”

He’s balancing an increasingly busy film schedule — next he’ll appear with Mia Wasikowska (The Kids Are All Right) in Madame Bovary — and playing with his band, Sons of an Illustrious Father. And though he’s played a gay teen before (in 2010’s Every Day) and is hardly a closed book in interviews, this is the first time he’s speaking quite so clearly about his sexuality.

“I’m queer,” he says, simply. “I have a lot of really wonderful friends who are of very different sexes and genders. I am very much in love with no one in particular. I’ve been trying to figure out relationships, you know? I don’t know if it’s responsible for kids of my age to be so aggressively pursuing monogamous binds, because I don’t think we’re ready for them. The romanticism within our culture dictates that that’s what you’re supposed to be looking for. Then [when] we find what we think is love — even if it is love — we do not yet have the tools. I do feel that it’s possible to be at this age unintentionally hurtful, just by being irresponsible — which is fine. I’m super down with being irresponsible. I’m just trying to make sure my lack of responsibility no longer hurts people. That’s where I’m at in the boyfriend/girlfriend/zefriend type of question.”

Ten years before the “It Gets Better” campaign, Chbosky had kids coming up to him at book signings to say that The Perks of Being a Wallflower saved their lives. The film’s website is collecting similar testimonials, and a quick search on Tumblr turns up hundreds more.

“I wanted to make the movie that celebrated a kid’s life at the same time that it celebrated any adult’s nostalgia. I think that we forget a lot of the pain and remember a lot of the good things,” says Chbosky. “But I wanted to validate the totality of their experience. Sometimes, that’s all it takes to give them one more piece of hope to go and build a better life.”

For Miller, every minute of press the film earns becomes an opportunity to pay that gratitude forward. “I just want kids in all situations to hold on. A lot of [adolescence] left me wanting to end my own life, just give up. It feels like the whole world — because it is. It’s your whole world. But, man — life is a really, really cool ride. It’s really amazing the type of shit you can get up to if you endure. Like, you can do anything you want if you can survive.”

The Perks of Being a Wallflower opens September 14. {out.com}

Aug14

Ezra @ “Lawless” Screening

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Ezra @ “Lawless” Screening

Ezra attended the The Cinema Society & Manifesto Yves Saint Laurent Screening Of The Weinstein Company’s “Lawless” last night, August 13th at the Paley Center for Performing Arts in New York. Stars Jessica Chastain and Shia Lebeauf were there, as well as Ezra’s Royal Pains co-star and lead Mark Feuerstein. Ezra’s winning accessory this time? He had a cane. CANE!

APPEARANCES > Appearances in 2012 > August 13: Screening of “Lawless”


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I wonder if he is growing his stache out for his role in Madame Bovary ;) ?

Aug8

Ezra for Teen Vogue

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Ezra for Teen Vogue

Ezra is in the September 2012 edition of Teen Vogue (with Selena Gomez on the cover). We just have previews of his new photoshoot and interview so far, feel free to donate HQ scans!

MEDIA > Magazine Scans > Teen Vogue – September 2012

He’s All That: Ezra Miller

Ezra Miller shines as a lovable outcast alongside Emma Watson and Logan Lerman in The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

by Alexis Swerdloff
Photographed by Gregory Harris


Ezra wears a Denim & Supply Ralph Lauren patchwork shirt, $98, and jeans, $165. True Religion shirt, $264. On right wrist, from left: Tod’s leather bracelet, $225. Chan Luu ID bracelet, $190. Giles & Brother cuff, $175.

I was a weird animal in high school,” nineteen-year old Ezra Miller says of his days growing up in Hoboken, New Jersey. Indeed, after several years of “doing no work and getting straight A’s,” Ezra dropped out at the age of sixteen; he landed parts in indie films like City Island and Afterschool before his breakout lead role opposite Tilda Swinton in last year’s We Need to Talk About Kevin. It’s that very feeling of being “a weird animal” that weaves through his latest movie, The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Based on Stephen Chbosky’s wildly popular young adult novel of the same name, the movie (directed by Chbosky) follows a group of friends, played by Ezra, Logan Lerman, Emma Watson, and Mae Whitman, as they navigate the wilds of high school as selfdescribed misfits. Ezra stars as Watson’s character’s gay stepbrother, Patrick, whom most of his classmates disparagingly refer to by the nickname “Nothing.”

The movie will likely resonate with anyone who’s ever gotten a pit in his or her stomach trying to figure out where to sit in the school cafeteria. But Ezra stresses that first and foremost, teens are the film’s target audience. “I really, really want Perks to be something that kids watch,” he says. Most films that are made for young people “end up being patronizing and so diluted that kids can’t actually relate to them. They end up watching adult movies, and the films they can relate to are way too intense for them.”

In addition to the story itself, it’s the remarkable chemistry between the Perks stars that makes the film so relatable. Which perhaps had something to do with the fact that while shooting in suburban Pittsburgh last year, the young actors lived on the same floor of a Crowne Plaza hotel. This, naturally, led to quite a few late-night—and very often early-morning—jam sessions. Ezra says, “Picture the entire cast—I’m talking Emma singing, me on the drums, Logan playing keyboards—all rocking out till five-thirty in the morning.” Multiple people, he adds, “including several families with kids, all checked out of their hotel rooms on our floor. They were very upset.” {teenvogue.com}