15 Responses for "Talking to Nancy Oliver"

1. nikplowman April 15th, 2008 at 1:33 pm 1

   Now this is super cool! Ryan you are so lucky, and I guess so are we for being able to listen in on the chat.

2. Alison Flynn April 15th, 2008 at 1:52 pm 2

   Awesome! Thanks for posting!

3. sartre April 15th, 2008 at 2:08 pm 3

   What an excellent interview Ryan. I imagine that Nancy Oliver was very happy to have a conversation about her script with someone so articulate, well researched, and who possesses such complete and appreciative affinity with its artistic sensibility coupled with a deep understanding of how her themes were realized.

   I look forward to many more of these. Bravo!

4. cjKennedy April 15th, 2008 at 2:19 pm 4

   Nicely done Mr. Adams. Hard to believe it was your first one. You’re already a pro.

5. Living in Cinema - Movie news, reviews and opinion April 15th, 2008 at 4:44 pm 5

   [...]  Check it out. [...]

6. glimmer April 15th, 2008 at 4:45 pm 6

   my hero talking to my hero. i wish it was a seven disc set.

   i don’t have pc speakers/but i have downloaded it.

   gonna listen….
   

7. Dorothy Porker April 15th, 2008 at 4:47 pm 7

   So nice to hear your voice! I echo the kudos — bravo!

8. Miranda Wilding April 15th, 2008 at 8:38 pm 8

   I’d love to say that I was unimpressed (especially after what happened today) but *ahem* that is SO not the case.

   I bow to you, Mr. Adams – and, as I’m sure you’re aware, I bow to NO ONE.

   See what you can accomplish when you’re not wank- I mean, drooling over Keira?

   It’s actually kind of hot in here. Maybe it’s that accent…?

9. Pierre de Plume April 15th, 2008 at 11:04 pm 9

   This is a great idea to do podcasts, and this first one is really good. Ryan, you’re a natural. I’m sure Ms. Oliver was very pleased to be speaking with someone who was well prepared — not just on her film but also her other work and what’s been said and written about it. The discussion is quite interesting as a result.

   I hope to see more of these in the future.

10. nikplowman April 16th, 2008 at 6:23 am 10

    And I did not laugh at your accent Ryan, not even a giggle

11. richard crawford April 16th, 2008 at 8:12 am 11

    Ryan, where are you from? What part of the country? What interests me is WHO liked and Who did not like LARS. Important critics did not like the movie. THAT fact makes no difference to me. Like some of you,I immediately got it, took it under wing. I have no idea what Pauline Kael would have thought….but I think…she would have liked Lars…but if she did not, what a review it would have been…a gentle review. Lars is
    one of the most gorgeously casted & acted movies of the year. It is not a realistic movie…but rather, some sort of quirky fable, although I hate to label it THAT. The fact that everyone in town embraced Lars and Bianca…is only one of its great charms. A shrink from the Claremont Colleges told me “Lars was delusional…I have worked with patients like him….” Some think the movie is “thin”. Maybe. If so, what a wonderful string-bean of a movie. Thanks Ryan…Richard Crawford.

12. Ryan Adams April 16th, 2008 at 4:02 pm 12

    Thanks, you guys, for all the encouraging feedback.

    Interesting thing about this interview is how you get to see me play the role of Lars. Uptight and stunted in the beginning. Gradually loosening up near the end as I try to approximate natural human behavior.

    A couple of things I trimmed at the end of the recording, because they didn’t seem to fit. Nancy Oliver is currently working on “True Blood” with longtime friend Alan Ball. It’s a new HBO series about vampires “coming out of the coffin” as accepted members of society, based on the Charlaine Harris novels. Anna Paquin stars as Sookie Stackwood, Louisiana barmaid and, um, mindreader. Nancy Oliver is writing and directing episode 11 (specific info you won’t find on IMDb.)

    As for Ms. Oliver’s next feature film project, she’s superstitious, and won’t reveal much until she has the current draft more locked down, possibly in June. At that time she hopes to have “worked enough kinks out to be able to talk about it.” All we know now is that it’s a Warner Bros. project called “Handyman.”

    Eager to hear more, I asked, “No other hints?”

    Nancy said, “It’s a Southeastern Western.”

13. Ryan Adams April 16th, 2008 at 4:14 pm 13

    Richard, I was born in Kentucky and grew up in Johnny Depp’s hometown. In fact, as a kid I lived on Hawthorne Drive, just 4 houses down from where the Depp family lived before they moved to Florida. (Johnny was long gone before I showed up in the neighborhood.)

    Around Middle School, I started to try to speak as if I had been born someplace else. Not too successful, but there was a teacher in 7th grade who asked me where I was from. (Though looking back, maybe she meant ‘what planet.’)

    I did more tampering with the accent in college — lots ‘n’ lots of colleges — from upstate New York, to the University of Chicago, to St Louis.

    Sherlock Holmes might also be able to detect from my accent that I spent a long long time living in Bangkok, where the usual things happen to melt an expat’s speech patterns into all kinds of clashing flavors.

    I can hear the Kentucky boy in George Clooney’s accent — and he really let it run wild in O Brother Where Art Thou. That’s about how I’d sound if I hadn’t had any other influences.

    Clooney and Depp I guess are Kentucky’s most famous contributions to Hollywood. Oh, and D.W. Griffith too.

14. DBibby April 17th, 2008 at 1:57 am 14

    That was wonderful Ryan. I bet she finished that interview thinking “Wow, I wish more interviewers were as switched-on and articulate and intelligent and genuine as he was”. It really was an interesting discussion of the film and its themes. I can’t wait to hear the next!

15. John McCosh May 21st, 2008 at 4:44 pm 15

    I was wondering if you could forward a message to Nancy Oliver for me. I’m in the MFA (screenwriting) program at Boston University, and I recently saw Lars And The Real Girl. My message to Nancy is simply that it was one of the best stories I’ve had the pleasure of seeing in a long time. Great job.

    Thanks in advance for passing this on.

    Sincerely,

    John McCosh
    johnmccosh@mac.com