V101: Special Digital Edition

SPECIAL DIGITAL EDITION THE FASHION & FILM ISSUE

101

sUMMER 2016

LILY-ROSE DEPP IN MSGM photographed by CHARLIE ENGMAN styled by EMMA WYMAN

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Photography Collier schorr CLOTHING DIOR EARRING DIOR FINE JEWELRY

do u b le f eat u r e Editor-in-ChieF / Creative Director Stephen Gan Editor Patrik Sandberg Managing Director Steven Chaiken Senior Editor Natasha Stagg Art Director Alexander McWhirter PHOTO editor Nicola Kast ASSOCIATE bookings editor Sara Zion online EDITOR William Defebaugh MARKET EDITOR Julian Antetomaso Associate eDITOR Ian David Monroe DesigN Mia Fabbri FREELANCE FASHION ASSISTANTS Stella Evans Amira Rasool Contributing Fashion Editors Robbie Spencer Joe McKenna Amanda Harlech Carlyne Cerf de Dudzeele Nicola Formichetti Beat Bolliger Panos Yiapanis Jane How Sarah Richardson Olivier Rizzo Clare Richardson Jacob K Andrew Richardson Melanie Ward Jonathan Kaye Tom Van Dorpe Tom Guinness Editor-at-Large Derek Blasberg Senior Fashion Editor Jay Massacret Contributing Editors, Entertainment Greg Krelenstein Alexia Elkaim / Starworks Copy EditorS Karly Alderfer Anne Resnik research editor Lela Nargi CONTRIBUTING EditorS Joseph Akel James Franco Miley Cyrus Kevin McGarry T. Cole Rachel Nicole Catanese Communications Paul Leggieri / Purple PR 212.858.9888 Production Director Jessica Kane PRODUCTION / marketing coordinator Wyatt Allgeier Distribution David Renard Financial Comptroller Sooraya Pariag Assistant Comptroller Ivana Williams Associate publisher Jorge Garcia jgarcia@vmagazine.com MANAGER, FASHION PARTNERSHIPS Michael Gleeson Advertising MANAGER Mandi Garcia mandi@linkbytwo.com 646.747.4545 Advertising Office, Italy and Switzerland Magazine International / Luciano Bernardini de Pace +39.02.76.4581 magazineinternational.it ADVErTISING REPRESENTATIVE Jeff Greif 212.213.1155 PRESS/EVENTs Remi Barbier Consulting Creative / Design Direction Greg Foley ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT Hannah Huffman INTERNS Eduardo Alfonso Paris Amaro Daniel Evans Cherish Ho Layla Ilchi Simon Naschberger Rachel Simunovich Adair Smith Price Brendon Stephen Xingyin Zhou

ON THE COVER LILY-ROSE DEPP wears clothing MSGM PHOTOGRAPHY CHARLIE ENGMAN FASHION EMMA WYMAN

V101 Collier Schorr Karl Lagerfeld Inez & Vinoodh Sean Baker Yorgos Lanthimos Gia Coppola Arianne Phillips Haley Wollens Charlie Engman Max Farago Thomas Giddings Jason Pietra Casper Sejersen Agata Belcen Julia Ehrlich Naomi Miller Donatella Musco Emma Wyman Tim Appelo Luis Venagas Maxwell Williams Katharine K. Zarrella SPECIAL THANKS Artist Commissions Shea Spencer Felix Frith 42 West Amanda Silverman Kate Rosen Intrepid Anya Yiapanis Roberta Arcidiacono Sayle Screen Ltd Matthew Bates ICM Partners Joanne Wiles IMG Models Maja Chiesi Elizabeth Carpenter Ethan Miller The Society Christopher Michael Starworks Artists Noelle Keshishian Samantha Jeudy Rory Aledort Cloutier Remix Madeline Leonard Jeanna Bonello Emily Gradess-Hartman Stania Jaspert Untitled Entertainment Javier Salgado Jason Weinberg Premier Hair and Make-up Lindsay Cruickshank Calliste Agency Marc Bourgeois Webber Represents Julian Watson Agency Madeleine Macrae Exposure NY Stacy Fischer ITB Worldwide Chenelle Croll CLM Deana Spavento Ford Models Sam Doerfler Jonny Shultz Jesse Simon The Wall Group Ali Bird Shannon Ryan Ridley Artistry London Elizabeth Norris Julie Velut Niki Bagdonas Great Bowery Sally Borno M.A.P. Matthew Youmans The Collective Shift Jae Choi Streeters Beverley Streeter Jerry Morrone Alisa Post Rachel Clark Gabriela Moussaieff Total Management Jordan Sternberg Nathalie Love D+V Management Louise Dudman Lucy Kay Brennan Casey Opus Beauty Natalie Miller Jed Root Camilla Morandi India Gentile Creative and Partners Justin Rose Kate Ryan Inc. Vicki Eilers Viewpoint Inc. Kaitlin Kovacich Art Department Carrie Ferriter Jeny Rosenblum V MAGAZINE 2 6

co m ing att r actions THE D IRE C TORS 34 CARY FUKUNAGA The filmmaker of the moment talks with Tim Appelo about why he’d rather see his work on the small screen for now

THE A C TORS 42 ELLIE BAMBER The rising film star discusses her first big fashion show, working with director Tom Ford, and surviving knife fights

36 JAMES FRANCO Our contributing editor interviews The Room’s Tommy Wiseau and Greg Sestero in preperation for the next film he’ll direct, produce, and star in

44 YOUNG HOLLYWOOD These women are taking over the superhero industry, from indie to big budget, one franchise at a time

38 PEDRO ALMODÓVAR Luis Venegas sits down with the most celebrated director in Spain to discuss a suprising new addition to his oeuvre

52 NEVE CAMPBELL A star on hiatus acknowledges the 20th anniversary of Scream and The Craft by getting back into the business that first made her famous

39 LEE DANIELS Alex Pettyfer catches up with the Empire creator on the set of his anticipated next film and reminisces about the days when they were working together

54 STARS OF SUNDANCE Nick Jonas, Lily-Rose Depp, Chloë Sevigny, Gabrielle Union, Clea DuVall, Natasha Lyonne, and others let us in on what they have in the pipeline this summer

40 ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY The legendary filmmaker celebrates a new novel and talks to Blake Butler about creating the sublime

70 CHARLIZE BY COLLIER SCHORR Charlize Theron talks to James Franco about her unsteady rise to Hollywood hot commodity and her first sequel Styled by Robbie Spencer

THE F ASHIO N 82 TAYLOR MADE BY YORGOS LANTHIMOS Taylor Hill tries on the season’s hottest swimwear for an audience of onlookers in their country home Styled by Agata Belcen 94 KENDALL IN COUTURE BY KARL LAGERFELD Kendall Jenner shows off the most daring couture collections and Andrew Bolton explains to Derek Blasberg exactly where tech fits into the handicraft conversation Styled by Amanda Harlech 106 CRÈME BRÛLÉE BY SEAN BAKER Lauren Alice Avery and Clu Gulager star in a MayDecember escape, wearing the coolest pre-fall clothes Styled by Haley Wollens 118 TWO WOMEN BY GIA COPPOLA This year’s V/Ford Model Search’s two new winners are destined for stardom and they’re getting their first big break in sunny L.A.—you saw them here first!

Styled by Arianne Phillips

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V MAGAZINE 2 8

no w pla y ing “I always wanted to be in the movies.”

This opening line, uttered by Charlize Theron in her Oscar-winning performance as the serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster, is one of those catch-all movie quotes that perfectly evokes the dream of cinema. At V, our goal has always been to dream in print. That’s why it’s surprising that, until now, we have never chosen to produce a Film Issue. Perhaps we found the task of putting together a monument to the world’s most dreamlike medium too challenging. But as we now realize, movies don’t need monuments. Just like fashion trends, they come and go every week. Some of them live in our permanent memories, while others can’t be forgotten fast enough. So, why not pay homage to the best film has to offer right now? We do have the movie star to end all movie stars, shot by Collier Schorr. Like those bad trends, some actors come and go, but everyone can agree that Charlize is forever.

At the Sundance Film Festival in January, streaming services like Amazon and Netflix dominated the buyers’ market. Many of the actors profiled in our annual portfolio, including Chloë Sevigny, Natasha Lyonne, Riley Keough, and Nick Jonas, have projects coming to multiple formats this year. The Nate Parker-helmed Birth of a Nation became the festival’s highest-selling property ever, at $17.5 million to Fox Searchlight, following a bidding war with Amazon. It’s undeniable that moviegoing as a cultural institution is experiencing a seismic shift. In the same way fashion brands are grappling with a new “see now, buy now” model, studios are figuring out a way to transition content to laptops and mobile devices, while still preserving the big-screen experience.

Who better to lead the charge than Beasts of No Nation director Cary Fukunaga? Perhaps the leading talent of his generation, Fukunaga is breaking down barriers between streaming, film, and television. As he tells film writer Tim Appelo, it’s about keeping content at a premium: “Diversity is being destroyed,” he says. “The kinds of films that are being made are ultimately V MAGAZINE 3 0

meaningless…that’s why cinema is moving to TV.” Even the iconic Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar is tempted. In a frank and funny conversation with Luis Venegas, he explains why film remains his favored format, evidenced by his latest, Julieta. But that doesn’t mean he’s against doing a series. (Just wait until you hear about his idea!) For Neve Campbell, her role on House of Cards as a campaign strategist marks her return to TV drama, the genre that launched her career back in the ’90s. On the 20th anniversary of her teen flicks Scream and The Craft, she’s still wielding the sharp tool of her craft, and tackling a new kind of horror: American politics.

It wouldn’t be a Film Issue at V without turning the spotlight on the next wave of Hollywood talent. In addition to breakout star Lily-Rose Depp, we’ve got seven of Tinseltown’s hot new ingenues. We also have fashion stories by the industry’s most talented young directors: Sean Baker creates a twisted love saga on the streets of Hollywood, Yorgos Lanthimos shoots Taylor Hill in the English countryside, and for our annual Ford Model Search, Gia Coppola teams up with Arianne Phillips to recreate Robert Altman’s 3 Women, employing Gucci’s PreFall pieces as costumes. Karl Lagerfeld and Kendall Jenner create worlds of fantasy of their own in haute couture, cinematically styled by Amanda Harlech.

In addition to interviewing our cover star, contributing editor James Franco is certainly our most experienced film buff, having directed, produced, and starred in countless motion pictures. For this issue, James gives us a serious look at Tommy Wiseau’s The Room. Often called “the Citizen Kane of bad movies,” Franco is turning the cult classic into a big-screen moment later this year with The Disaster Artist. Featuring A-list celebrities playing the reallife characters who brought this monstrosity of a movie to life, the film should prove that some of cinema’s greatest dreams come from nightmares. Aileen Wuornos would certainly be able to relate to that. MR. V

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picture and might have won star Idris Elba an Oscar for his role as the children’s Commandant if Oscar voters didn’t fear that Netfix might steal their jobs by sending moviegoers to TV. Elba slipped of a clif, nearly dying on the shoot, too.

“Beasts felt like Fitzcarraldo or Aguirre, the Wrath of God,” says Fukunaga, referring to director Werner Herzog’s two legendary jungle epics, during the flming of which, star Klaus Kinski contemplated murdering Herzog. For Beasts, Fukunaga also ended up stepping in as cinematographer, on top of serving as the flm’s director, location scout, and overnight rewriter. Some days the actors didn’t show up, or got the uncontrollable giggles, delaying flming. There wasn’t enough money to fnish all the shots, but, through ruthlessly trimming scenes and flling in with voiceovers, he made it feel fnished.

Fukunaga refused to presell the flm to a studio, which might have tried to insert a white star or stamp it with a Hollywood formula. “I defnitely come from a generation that is sick of [movies] telling us exactly what to feel,” says Fukunaga. “My reaction is almost contrary to what they want—rebelling.”

But on Beasts, meddlesome studio suits weren’t the menace. “Snakes were everywhere,” says the director. “One day Idris tried to knock this giant snake of a branch overhead with mangoes, and you didn’t know if it was mangoes coming down or the snake.” Elba’s child costar, Abraham Attah,

who won the Venice Film Festival Best Young Actor award, was scared of the snakes, and also of Elba, who stayed tough even when the camera wasn’t rolling. “It’s because of their darker qualities that all my villains have some magical charm, bad-guy charisma,” says Fukunaga. “It’s the reason they attract people like they do.”

Beasts, however, was not Fukunaga’s frst brush with cinematic calamity. While flming aboard a Mexican train for his debut feature flm, Sin Nombre (which won Best Director at Sundance), real gangsters ambushed the train and killed a passenger while another died in a police chase.

“My career started fast,” Fukanaga notes, “which is nothing to complain about, but I hadn’t even graduated from NYU Film School. I thought I’d have more time to learn the craft.

There were classical storytelling techniques I hadn’t had a chance to practice.” When Focus Features’ James Schamus ofered him the 2011 remake of Jane Eyre, Fukunaga viewed it as a chance to expand his repertoire. “Sin Nombre was a guerrilla production, so I wanted to see if I could fex dramatic storytelling chops and make this 160-year-old novel relevant today,” he says. “It’s almost a proto-feminist manifesto. Plus, I wanted to do a historical epic.” Fukunaga is taking on movie history, genre by genre.

Jane Eyre gave him a chance to leap from the style of

Grooming Dick Page (Jed Root) Hair Ward for Living Proof (The Wall Group) Production Stephanie Bargas, Tucker Birbilis, Eva Harte (VLM Productions) Studio manager Marc Kroop Retouching Stereohorse

Writer/director Cary Joji Fukunaga, 38, was named after Cary Grant. He’s as immaculately natty and omnicompetent as any star he’s hired—or dated (such as arthouse heartthrob Michelle Williams). Roger Ebert hailed his “mastery of image and story,” and Emma Stone and Jonah Hill have agreed to star in his Netfix reboot of the Norwegian dark-comic series Maniac, about the heroic fantasy world of a mental patient. Not bad for a guy whose father was born in a U.S. internment camp for Japanese-Americans. Growing up in California between his dad’s home and that of his SwedishAmerican history professor mom and Mexican-American stepdad, Fukunaga wrote a Civil War screenplay as a kid.

“My college thesis was on the Smithsonian’s censored exhibitions on Hiroshima and the internment camps,” he says.

Infuenced by his Sundance mentor, Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal (Oscar-nominated lefty screenwriter mom of Maggie and Jake and ex of American Historical Association president Eric Foner), Fukunaga is an auteur for our time— rooted in multicultural reality, a director who started out making snowboard videos and is now shattering the TV/flm barrier, with a poet’s visionary gleam.

“I got malaria and almost stepped on a poisonous snake in Ghana on Beasts of No Nation,” he says of his 2015 flm about African child soldiers. It became Netfix’s frst major motion

Alfonso Cuarón’s Y Tu Mamá También, which influenced Sin Nombre, to another film that formed him, Stanley Kubrick’s candlelit 18th-century drama. “It’s not as epic as Barry Lyndon, but there was a lot of joy in learning about the different genres,” says Fukunaga. Grappling with Michael Fassbender and Dame Judi Dench taught him how to negotiate with Hollywood authority, and Fukunaga’s Jane Eyre is, in some ways, the best since the 1943 version starring Orson Welles, which he knows practically frame by frame. “I learned not to call cut on a period film—as soon as you do, 500 people walk off set and it takes 20 minutes to get shooting again.”

His next project won him an Emmy, challenged the HBO ratings record set by Martin Scorsese’s Boardwalk Empire, and opened all industry doors: the 2014 debut season of True Detective, a fantastically ramifying verbal kudzu of a factinspired murder mystery that did wonders for stars Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, and has an afterlife in McConaughey’s portentous car commercials. “HBO gave us the freedom to shoot it like a movie—it’s not all closeups,” says Fukunaga. The eight-hour series boasted 300 locations, a 500-page script shot at up to 29 pages a day, flashbacks between four time periods, and a tour de force finale—a single, six-minute handheld tracking shot of a hellish drug bust—that made Fukunaga Hollywood’s director du jour.

Instead of yelling “Cut,” he kept shooting as makeup people touched actors up on the fly. Even his rumored clash with True Detective writer Nic Pizzolatto was historically significant, a collision of the director-centric world of film and the writerruled world of TV. But Pizzolatto has denied that an annoying director character on the show’s second season was a jab at Fukunaga, who only shot the first season.

Fukunaga’s astounding streak hit a bump with his recent attempt to film Stephen King’s It for New Line Cinema, which, the trades say, wanted to spend less money and hew to lucrative horror formulas, instead of a character-rich, Kingesque and Fukunagan creepiness. He decided to ditch three years of work on It and move on. “I signed a nondisclosure agreement, so I can’t comment, though I’d love to,” says Fukunaga, who, besides the new Netflix show, is brewing a stage musical, mulling a big historical epic, and savoring his new deal with Paramount TV. His first project as a director/executive producer there is for TNT. “I’m doing Caleb Carr’s The Alienist, about an early psychologist who’s obsessed with discovering the mind of a serial killer in 1890s lower Manhattan, with police commissioner Teddy Roosevelt’s help.” Fukunaga underscores that he’s “going for the dirty, haphazard banality of serial killer crimes, as opposed to the last 20 years of these overly theatrical sensational crime cases. The detectives are

in peril because of the subject they focus on. We’ll avoid stereotypes and show how diverse and dense it was—the most populated square mile in the whole world, depravity side by side with wealth, the exploitation of the people.”

Fukunaga is still in love with the silver screen—he advocated for Netflix to open Beasts theatrically as well as digitally. “I really want Netflix to open cinemas, cross over to the big screen experience. They have so much content.” But he knows he’s helping lead a migration of talent away from existing theaters. “Diversity is being destroyed,” he reasons, “and the kinds of films that are being made are ultimately meaningless. I wish it was 90 percent movies like Christopher Nolan’s Inception and not franchises, book adaptations, or comic book movies. But that’s why cinema is moving to TV.” Back in the 1940s, Fukunaga’s grandfather gazed through barbed wire at California’s Tule Lake Segregation Center, dreaming of being a writer. Now, his grandson is helping transform how movies are made. “The cinema is a magical place to experience moral tales and so many different parts of what makes us human,” says Fukunaga. “I’m trying to keep the magic alive in my stories.” TIM APPELO

PhOTOgrAPhy INEZ & VINOODh FAShION JOE McKENNA CLOTHING TOM FOrD

THE DIRECTORS

JAMES FRANCO OUR CONTRIBUTING EDITOR TALKS TO TOMMY WISEAU AND GREG SESTERO ABOUT THE ROOM, THE BOOK ALL ABOUT IT, AND THE UPCOMING STAR-STUDDED FILM BASED ON BOTH

. . .f h g. d p . f.G g. d.T .B .2013.b k. h. h . . .

I .d g . ep du g . d. g. . .d z . f. h . k g. f.T .W u .

— .2003. u . film that stars both Wiseau and Sestero, lovingly referred to as “the worst movie ever made.” Follow? In my take, I play Wiseau and my brother Dave plays Sestero. Seth R g .( h . ep du ) .A .G .K .Up .J h.

Hutcherson, Zac Efron, Sharon Stone, Jacki Weaver, Alison B .H b .Bu .B .C .Z .D u h. d. . . . . .H .I . h g. . .b . e viewing Tommy (who, yes, makes a cameo in ). d.G g . .

JAMES FRANCO D d. u. d. h .b k . ?

TOMMY WISEAU No comment, move on, next question..

Ju . g JF What do you think about a movie being made of your life?

TW I love it. You’re doing a good job. You’re a good actor. The best ever. People will realize that it’s the American dream. I wanted to be a filmmaker, I wanted to be an actor, and I did everything possible. Some of the stuff I did differently, but I’m very proud of my project. I think people enjoy it. I hope that your movie will be the best, too, James.

JF . . . h .I .f . k . u. d d. . . b . .d TW What is your question?

JF Did you?

TW I learned in school that the more colors you have, the better. So, how do you define drama and how do you define comedy? I wanted it mixed up. Like, “You are tearing me apart, Lisa.” So, we don’t talk that way, but guess what? I have a f d. h . u . k . h . .I .fu .A . h . p e ers and critics ask how I would divide it between drama and comedy and I would say 50/50. Some of this stuff is quirky.

JF Are you ever going to direct another movie?

TW.Ab u .I . k g. .F .I . d. . .

—h .f u JF H .d d. u.g . h . .f . ?

V MAGAZINE 3 6

TW That’s a beautiful question you have. Not an ordinary question, but it’s a good question. You live in America, you work hard at what you do, you save money, right? When you save money, what do you do? You spend it. I spent it on the movie. I used to have a retail store in the Bay Area.

JF H .d d. u.d . h. . k . d . g. . k . over the movie?

TW.Wh . h.R g .p . d . . . h .h pp .

I learned in a business class that if somebody quits and doesn’t give you notice, you don’t give them credit. I respect h . d. h .h . .bu . h .h .d d. . g .b . .

JF What is your relationship with the actors like now?

TW Juliette [Danielle, who played Lisa] sometimes shows up, as we have regular screenings of . . . h .up .bu . u.k . . . . .h . .p g .Th . nice people and that’s all I can say. Everybody did a good job, h . .I. d. h . . .I. h. h . u k. d. . k . millions, whatever. I have to enjoy myself.

JF.H .d . u.d . h. h g. u . u d . . h . people are laughing?

TW So what? They laugh, who cares? I don’t care. The more h . ugh . h .b JF Why? TW Why? JF I . .d .

TW So what?

JF . . .d .

TW.C z K . .d . .bu . .p p . ugh JF.Bu . .p p . . ugh g TW You make me laugh right now, I swear.

JF Is there anything in our movie that you hope we capture?

TW There was a lot of arguing with the script supervisor. I h k. u. h u d. p u . h .Th . . . . f. gu g. h. .W . u .h d. . k . . h . .Th . h . thing Greg did not put in the book. Your movie will probably straighten out some of this injustice toward . .

I appreciate your effort to do a good job...but I don’t know what kind of job you’re doing, to be honest.

JF How do you respond to criticism?

TW I say, “You know what? You don’t have to watch me.

That’s fine. I’m happy with my one million worldwide viewers.

If I’m such a lousy actor, why don’t you do your own acting?

Maybe you can show us what you can do.” That’s my answer.

Bu .I.d . . .b .h . h. u .I. . . . .

“Read only the positive comments.” Touchdown.

JF Touchdown. When did you first meet Greg?

TW I don’t actually talk about Greg, so I’ll just respond to your question generally. To Greg and others I always say, “You guys have the same opportunities as Brad Pitt.” Some p p .d . . .h . .Th . h k. u. . u. g . and get a $20 million job. That’s not how it works here. You have to work very hard, and don’t criticize other people b u . u.d .k . h . .h pp .Bu .G g. . . cool guy; he’s a very dedicated person. I personally think h .h . u d. k .$20. .f . .p .H . k .J .

Dean, if you really think about it. But I’m very uncomfortable k g. b u .h ..

JF Why are you uncomfortable?

TW.B u .h . .b .f d. d.b u .I . .h .

It’s not my business. Move on.

JF Greg told me your first two choices were Johnny Depp and me. If you were to direct me in a movie now, what would it be?

TW I like the movie . . . . . . .

That’s the part of the movie I relate to. I’ll tell you privately.

JF A gigolo in New Orleans? You relate to that?

TW Absolutely. Actually, I have a script called .

You could be part of it. I know a couple of high rollers, you know, S-E-X, $2,000 a night, whatever. I will send you the p .I. . u. .p du . d. k. b u . g. h . budget—$20 million?

JF My God. How do you get this money?

TW Did you see the Richard Gere movie, ?

M . . . . h .bu . u h. . .

JF Will you be in it?

TW Yeah, of course.

JF Give me a little taste.

TW Okay, I’ll give you one taste. In one of the scenes, somee body hires him to have sex with a guy, and the guy gives him only $200, and he tries to beat him, and he says, “You fuckk fucke ing faggot, give me my money now.” The guy opens his safe and he gives him almost $100,000. Each time he gives him another hundred, he says, “That’s all I’m worth?” He almost k .h .Th . . g .I.h . u.gu .

JF I . . g.

FROM LEFT: T mmy Wi ea a Greg Se er ree ac i g a ce e fr m l Wi u a Cau at the Griffith Observatory upon Wiseau’s SAG membership announcement (1999); Wiseau on set of (2002); Karen Kramer, Wiseau, and Ed Lozzi at the premiere of (2003); billboard in L.A. (2004)

Images courtesy Greg Sestero

JAMES FRANCO Y a T mmy eem ike a ike y i wi h y , righ ? c mb . H w i y e p frie ?

GS He showed me this student film called GREG SESTERO My f reig pbri gi g wa a big par .

Pa that he made when he was going to LACC, so I think French was my first language. I took an [acting] class [in he’d been trying to bust in since the late ’80s. He used to San Francisco] and I saw Tommy—there’s something about tell me about splicing Super 8 together. This film was just him that’s just really different. His accent wasn’t one I’d heard a dude walking around looking at cars to “Blue Monday” by bef re. He ma e me a gh whe he perf rme , a b y Orgy. And around ’94, ’95, he was taking that workshop with else in class did that. He was awkward and kind of standoffish, Vi ce Cha e. but once the ice started to break, I really felt more at home JF Vi ce Cha e i ac a y a we rre pec e eacher. with him than I did with guys my own age. Because the stuff GS They ha a fa i g . T mmy a way p a f gh he was saying—when you got through all the wacky stuff— back, and that was it for him. After he’d run out of those classes he kind of faded away from L.A. He’s a fighter, though. ra g r e. He wa free m me, a ha p i .

It’s not like he had parents helping him out, paying for stuff; JF Was there anything different about him then?

GS There wa i a i ce ce him. Li e by i e, he g he could have very easily been satisfied making money doing a shade darker. He was secretive. I never asked questions this retail stuff. What’s interesting is that he was taking all about his age or his money. He’d disappeared and I’d seen a these classes, but they didn’t influence him. You don’t see any little bit of a darker side, so I didn’t trust him emotionally as technique that he learned. His big thing with me was always, “You’re not loud enough. You need to yell.” m ch by he ime we were i g .

JF Was there an especially awkward moment after he first JS Is that an interpretation of James Dean? rea y r b k?

GS Yeah, and Brando—they’d pick a moment to really floor GS I was on the road with him in 2010—when the movie i,a h e are he ce e ha are h w ver a ver started taking off—and I started interviewing him and he was a he c a ic m me . fine with that. I think he thought I’d never really do a book.

JF The crew we hr gh evera perm a i ,b he Then he said he refused to buy it, so I could give him a copy, i i ia crew ac a y ha a fair am f experie ce, righ ? or else he would never read it. I thought maybe that’d be a GS They were w rki g i a 3 a he ame ime. good thing. But I gave him a copy. Little by little, he would JF A hey agree i beca e T mmy pai we ? come up with things that he didn’t agree with. He’d lash out GS Yeah. At one point, Raphael [Smadja, one of ’s and be like, “I never dyed my hair.” successive DPs] was telling us, “He’s a nice man, but he’s JF D y hi k here wa a y hi g him ca i g y a just flushing money down the toilet.” He’s incredibly stubborn.

Mark, Johnny’s best friend, who betrays him?

I think it comes from whatever way he worked himself out GS i ba ica y hi ife experie ce mixe wi h f ivi g i Ea er E r pe a c mi g Fra ce, a he his view of life, of the ideal. I think he went through exactly c mi g America. He f a way bec me i epe e what happened in it. I don’t know whether it was a girl, but and financially successful doing it his way. I don’t even think somebody he trusted betrayed him. I think he always kind he could have fit in working at McDonald’s. Not because f aw me a meb y wh may be ray him. The rigi a he’s not capable, but because he’s better suited working for crip i ch a c ear wi wi wh he i beca e everyr him e f ha i a c ab ra ive e vir me . body talks the same way. Every character’s written in his JF Whe y ar e he m vie, i y hi k a y e voice and everybody’s best friends and they mention it all w ever ee i ? the time. It’s touching.

GS I literally didn’t expect anything from it. I’d show my parr e he ai ie , a we were a ghi g, ike, “Ca y imagi e JF D y hi k here wa a De y i hi ife?

GS The way he’d talk to Denny is like what he’d say to me if anybody ever saw this thing?” It was virtually impossible back he . He ge De y a apar me a he ame hi g for it to go anywhere. When it took off, it felt like having this happened with me. I think he probably didn’t have much of embarra i g c i ha y he fami y k w ab ,b a childhood or a chance to be a teenager, so he’s obsessed y w er wha her pe p e w hi k f him. wi h ha peri .

JF Di pe p e a gh a he premiere?

JA He’d made attempts to break into the biz before he moved GS I left after about five minutes of it and hung out in the

lobby. I checked back in maybe halfway through and people were a ghi g. He wa pre y e a he e .

JF Se h R ge fe ike he m awkwar m me f i he erwear ce e, beca e he g y i actually trying to be funny, and it’s so forced that it’s the least f y m me f he wh e m vie.

GS It’s not self-aware at all, so when those things come on, it feels like a bad audition for a sitcom pilot. Stanley Kramer— the director who produced Brando’s first movie, — hi wi w a heir a gh er came i a im he premiere.

Afterward, the daughter’s like, “Tommy, I think your talent is comedy. I think you’re like Christopher Walken…quirky.” A week a er he i a ew rai er f r a a e at the very end, “Experience this quirky new comedy!” He f hi cree i g r m Wi hire ha w h wi a Sa r ay ri g he ay f r free, a he g a he e college students to show up. I showed up one day and it was packe . The e ki were imi a i g ce e fr m he m vie.

JF That was before Sunset 5 started showing it?

GS Right. He had to pay for [Sunset 5] to show it, once a month at midnight. The billboard was up for five years.

E ai W kl i a ar ic e ha came i December 2008. In January 2009, all five screens.

JF But he knew that to get people in there he had to push he c me y a g e, righ ?

GS He knew that he had a circus animal quality. He knew h w ham i p.

JF Why do you think he does the Q&As? He doesn’t ever answer any questions.

GS F r him, e Sa r ay f every m h he w ge g hi hea er a have a h a pe p e wai i g out there, and he’d play football with them and take pictures.

JF He’s made some other things, but they’re definitely not he ame.

GS In , you’re seeing the guy at his most mostt authentic self, and he’s on a mission to make his mark. You’ve g a g y wh ha g e hr gh he wri ger. He w g so hard for the fences, and now that his film has been embraced...I don’t know if he could go there again because he’s kind of lost touch with that guy. It’s more about being that character. Everything’s recycled. Instead of creating new movies, he’s creating merchandise. I told him, “You have all the resources to do whatever you want. You’re in a totally ideal position.” But he always gives an excuse: “It’s not as easy as you think.”

the DIReCtORS

PEDRO ALMODÓvAR THE FAMOUSLY ECCENTRIC DIRECTOR MAKES A MOVE TOWARDS SUBTLETY IN HIS LATEST TOUR-DE-FORCE

©El Deseo, D.A., S.L.U. From left: photo by Manolo Pavón; photo by Nico Bustos

The most popular Spanish director of all time, whose stellar credits include Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, and, most recently, 2013’s I’m So Excited!, has a new movie out this year—an occasion celebrated by his legion of adoring fans. And Pedro Almodóvar’s fans are extra lucky, because Julieta is easily one of his best works. It’s extremely contained, and coming from someone as exuberant as Almodóvar, that’s a remarkable novelty. The director and I sat down in his production studio in Madrid to discuss this surprisingly refreshing new path.

LUIS VENEGAS Julieta is the best film I’ve seen recently. It begins with an almost habitual phrase: “Voy a contarte todo lo que no tuve ocasión de contarte.” The theme of secrets, or things that are not said, is very consistent in your films.

PEDRO ALMODÓVAR This film was going to be called Silencio. A lot remains silent in the character, Julieta’s, life.

And silences are lethal in relationships. This movie made me think about some of my own “silences.”

LV Do you have any secrets that you’ve never told anyone, or something that you wish you had told someone?

PA Absolutely.

LV How do you resolve that?

PA It’s difficult to resolve, especially when it’s been a long time and has instilled a reality in which the secret has damaged the relationship. In my relationships, I should have expressed more, especially earlier in my life. But it’s part of my character. At the same time, I am socially very expressive and chatty, but in private I am much more airtight.

LV These silences make Julieta a very mysterious film. The performances of the two leads, Emma Suárez and Adriana Ugarte, are excellent.

PA They’re essential. These two actresses are new to me, but Emma has a long career behind her. Adriana had been seen very little, but it was very clear from the beginning that her features corresponded with what I was looking for on paper.

I worked a lot with both of them. My films are not based on visual effects or a lot of action; the main tool I use to tell stories is the faces of the actors. I place a lot of importance on this and dedicate half the time of shooting to developing their performances.

LV In Spain, Emma Suárez has a huge cult following.

PA Since the early ’90s; she began her career as a teenager.

Emma has an unusual physicality in Spanish cinema: really blonde, so thin, but with huge breasts. She looks more like an American.

LV I noticed that you include a few homages to film V MAGAZINE 3 8

mythology. One of the characters, the sculptor Eva, seems like a tribute to Ava Gardner. Rossy de Palma’s character is like Mrs. Danvers from Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca.

PA Totally. Visually, I was inspired by Judith Anderson in Rebecca, who is one of my favorite screen characters. I also saw a picture by Annie Leibovitz of her mother, who has that kind of short, curly hair; it’s beautiful. That’s the inspiration I gave to the hairdressers. It transformed Rossy. She’s an icon with a splendid career, but she’s odd and almost a cartoonish actress, and I wanted to avoid humor at all times.

LV Would you say that Julieta is your most subdued movie?

PA Yes, absolutely. That was the first intention I had.

LV Are you at a point in your life when you feel you need to contain yourself, or was it necessitated by the story?

PA The story asked it of me. This film is also a product of my current age, and I don’t think I could have done it before now. I feel the weight of my age in the style of things I’m dealing with. Lifestyle influences, of course—because now I live a life that is almost the opposite of the one I lived in the ’80s—are reflected in the film.

LV How do you compare your life then with your life now?

PA People saw me as someone who was partying nonstop in the ’80s. I love to remember that time. I think I’m the same, but I don’t have that life at all anymore. It just so happens that none of that is possible now.

LV You’re a public figure now, probably the most popular Spanish figure in the world.

PA It would be a never-ending scandal. [laughs] But also, I couldn’t work. I haven’t played with any artificial stimulants in a long time. Even in the ’80s, I always left at a certain time.

People would say, “You’re leaving already?” But I would have to, because the next day I had things on top of things to do, whether it was making phone calls or Super 8 films.

LV See, you’ve always been very responsible.

PA My vocation saved me, I think, because I’ve been surrounded by chasms, like everyone in my generation. Chasms that are people. The fact that I wanted to do something the next day saved me. It’s been like this from the first moment of my adolescence, in an ironclad way.

LV Now that Martin Scorsese has made Vinyl, David Lynch is returning to Twin Peaks, and Woody Allen is shooting a TV series, would you ever be tempted to tell stories in an episodic format?

PA For me, as a storyteller, I prefer to address a block of time according to the terms with which film is approached: an hour and a half to two hours. But serial narration does allow you to create a depth in the characters that film does not

allow. Julieta, with everything that does not appear in the film, could have been a book. Or you could have made a series of five chapters, say, an hour each, and you could have gotten the characters to contemplate the story in all its magnitude.

I have an idea for a story about gender, done in my own way, about making replicants, like Blade Runner. They’re replicants gone wrong and, in many cases, they become funny appliances. I imagine it as a comedy, thinking of some of my favorite Spanish actresses. But I’m in no hurry. I think there is a whole new wave of movies about this, like Ex Machina. I better go register this idea!

LV You always talk about Spanish actresses, but the biggest American movie stars have also said they would love to work with you.

PA I was going to give the lead role of Julieta to a non-Spanish actress, because initially I was going to shoot it in the U.S., but at the last moment, I was afraid. I often travel to New York and spend a month there doing promotion, but I don’t know how to go to a hairdresser, how to go to the bakery…I don’t know the details about other cultures that aren’t Spanish. I do know enough English to speak and deepen the characters, and I do dream of directing some of the actresses who say that they like me. I’m not crazy about the idea of doing a Hollywood blockbuster, though. It would be ideal to find a story spoken in English, but that takes place in Madrid.

LV For someone who repeatedly conveys relationships between mothers and daughters, have you ever thought about having a child?

PA Yes, often. It seems too late, though. I would have done it 20 years ago with a surrogate. I have a bisexual past, and I remember that I was terrified of bringing a child into the world at that time. From the age of 40 on, I have felt the opposite.

But with the life I live, there is nothing that holds me in place more than being a movie director. And there is no profession more vampiric than this. It is not a life for sharing.

LV I have a question I’ve wanted to ask you for years, a question Rossy de Palma poses in Law of Desire: ¿qué es lo que más te chifla y lo que más te amuerma del amor?

PA Lo mismo. [laughs] Because love is so ambivalent. The fact that you lose control is so wonderful and terrible at the same time. When there is something greater than your personality, your plans, your character—when someone comes and crushes you—that’s healthy. Through destruction, there is clarity. I always advise that, when it comes to love, you must surrender. Not surprisingly, El Deseo is the name of my production company. There is no other vital fuel that can be compared with desire.

the DIReCtORS

Lee DanieLs THE VISIONARY WHO HAS DEFIED THE FILM/TV DIVIDE BY SIMPLY GOING ALL OUT SPEAKS WITH ACTOR AND FRIEND ALEx PETTYFER ABOUT ACHIEVING THE AMERICAN DREAM Everyone is talking about Empire. A modern day Machiavellian tale of a hip-hop dynasty beset by familial intrigue, it’s the kind of show that you can’t stop watching, a masterwork of plot twists driven by larger-than-life characters that could only come from the mind of creator Lee Daniels. And indeed, from Gabourey Sidibe’s Oscar-nominated part in Precious to Forest Whitaker’s standout performance in Lee Daniels’ The Butler, the director/producer has a gift for telling stories that resonate with audiences both on the big screen and at home. Daniels is currently producing the multiracial Dreamgirls-meets-genderqueer drama, Star, a pilot that will air on Fox. It’s long been rumored that Alex Pettyfer, who had a part in The Butler, will someday star in a Daniels joint.

Here, the actor and director reconnect about what it means to make a movie, just as Pettyfer’s Elvis & Nixon begins its long-awaited press cycle.

LEE DANIELS Now you be kind, Alex.

ALEX PETTYFER You’re going to love my questions. Your career in our industry has been quite a diverse one. At points you were a manager, a casting director, a producer, and a director. You’ve managed to build an empire, no pun intended.

What is the key behind your success and what are the most valuable things you’ve learned along the way?

LD I’m not really a businessman. I mean, I come from a family of gangsters. For African-Americans, back when I was a kid, there really weren’t many opportunities aside from minimum-wage jobs, so many of us resorted to shady sorts of dealings because that was the only way to survive. I think crafty is the right word for me. I knew that I wanted to be a director, so I did whatever it took to make me a director.

I didn’t go to school, as I couldn’t afford it, and I just used the craft, the skills that were passed down to me. So, as opposed to being a pimp, I hustled actors. I did it very well and learned while on the sets of these films how to direct.

I was always directing theater while I was managing, while I was casting. I think that the will to survive, coming from poverty, and knowing that I had nothing to lose motivated me. I was comfortable with nothing and I am comfortable with nothing. I think that you have to be okay with going back to nothing to roll the dice and pursue your dream, the American dream.

AP There have been many times in my career that I’ve been very fortunate with success and I’ve also had nothing as well— gone back to nothing—and, for me, that journey of going back, trying to make something again, is almost as enjoyable as being there. Our industry is rapidly changing. The lines between TV and film undoubtedly are being blurred. What’s your view on the likes of Netflix and Amazon and their impact?

LD The first time I had to shoot on digital was for television and I didn’t even know what I was doing, that’s how rapid things are. I jumped into TV as a fluke, not knowing that Empire was going to be what it is. I just wanted to check it off my bucket list. I know nothing about the net-streaming thing. I am, at the end of the day, a theater director. I know the human condition and I know how to make people laugh, I know how to make people cry, and I know how to make people feel sexual. That’s my gift. Also, the minute I start overthinking the way the world works and the way the entertainment business works, that’s when I’ll begin losing sight of my art and what it is that I want to tell. So, whether it’s TV, Netflix, or film, I choose not to engage in the medium of what the business of it all is.

AP I’ve been directed by you and it was one of the most unsettling experiences, in a positive way.

LD Alex! I agreed to this interview because you said you were going to be nice.

AP In a positive way! You cut to the core of an individual’s insecurity and deepest emotions, drawing out some of the most unexpected performances. You are the quintessential actor’s director.

LD That makes me feel good. You know, when you work with someone, it’s a very strange feeling. It’s like making love without touching—it’s like tangoing. That person is on your journey with you and willing to throw theirself off a cliff with you, and there is nothing more fulfilling. I watched you transform because you were willing.

AP What are your insecurities as a filmmaker?

LD The key to my magic is trust, so I guess what makes me insecure is an actor that doesn’t trust. I will never hire an actor that doesn’t trust me. But sometimes I’m tricked.

Sometimes I’m misled in the initial meeting, where they make me believe that they trust [me], and then they don’t. That is terrifying because why are we there? And trust me, if I have to trick the actor into getting what I want, that’s when the gangster in me comes out.

AP The relationships that you can form, the relationships that you have on set with people, the communal love that everyone has for one another on a set—[The Butler] was one of the only sets that I didn’t have any trouble on.

LD Do you want to know why? I’ll tell you why. It’s because of trust. And when you trust, your beauty comes out and you’re not guarded because when actors—and you have been one of them—get fucked by a director, nothing is worse.

You clam up and then you can’t trust, and that’s a bad thing.

That’s a bad thing because there are a lot of hacks out here that call themselves directors.

AP The trust in which you empower the people you work with gives you something that is magical, something that comes across on screen and that makes you a visionary. When I watch The Butler, or Precious, or The Paperboy, even movies we won’t mention [cough] Monster’s Ball—that trust is something that every director is always looking for.

LD So this wasn’t a naughty interview after all. Look, I don’t pretend to know my story; I know the story that I’m going to tell. I know the actor that I’m going to work with. I know the

character I’m playing with. I trust my art department. I trust just like I expect the actors to trust. I have to.

AP My next question is going to make you laugh.

LD: Well, all your questions make me laugh, but go ahead.

AP You were known for wearing pajamas on set. What was the reason behind that?

LD Well, I was fat.

AP But now you’re in beautiful black cashmere jumpers and you look suave and chic. I saw the photo shoot that Hedi [Slimane] did with you [for V] and you are handsome as fuck.

LD I don’t know what it was, but I woke up and I was like, What the fuck? I didn’t expect to be successful and I don’t even think I wanted to be successful, but over time, I learned to love myself, which is a very hard thing to do after I didn’t for so long.

AP I had a very similar mentality to what you’re saying. When I had all of the success coming my way, I wasn’t prepared for it and I wasn’t, I guess, happy with who I was yet.

LD You’re so young, with such a bright future ahead. You want it now, you always want it now. You want it yesterday. I see that in you, and I think people around you see that eagerness, too. All I can say is that I wish I made the changes that you have made at your age. You have nothing but the sky, baby.

AP What does the future hold for Lee Daniels?

LD I’m very excited by this Richard Pryor project [Richard Pryor: Is It Something I Said?] I’m working on. But I think my fantasy, my dream project, is to do my life story: an original musical told from the perspective of this black kid who dared to dream. From that rat-infested room in which I grew up, to where I am today. No one would believe it, but that’s the American dream.

AP That would be amazing to see.

LD Wouldn’t it be fun? Maybe you could play me!

IlluStRatIOn SIlVIa PRaDa

the DIReCtORS

ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY THE FILMMAKER dIscussEs HIs MAgIcAL woRLd on THE occAsIon oF HIs nEwEsT novEL’s EngLIsH TRAnsLATIon—buT don’T cALL IT MAgIcAL REALIsM

I’m live on Skype with Alejandro Jodorowsky, talking about cyborgs and rebirth, when my sister texts me that she’s gone into labor with her first child. I don’t bring it up in our conversation, but I can’t stop smiling. I can’t help but imagine that the legendary Chilean director and author’s voice is in my head right now for a reason, one that has something to do with the sublime.

“One day is a fantastic gift, one more day,” Jodorowsky is saying from Paris. “What is a year? It’s a circle around the sun. That is all.”

Casual viewers of Jodorowsky’s work—from his most well-known midnight cult films El Topo (1970) and The Holy Mountain (1973) all the way up to his most recent creations, the newly translated novels Where the Bird Sings Best (2015) and Albina and the Dog-Men (May 10, Restless v magaZine 4 0

occur at any moment imbues the audience’s experience with something akin to a religious encounter. It’s much more than shock or even mere entertainment.

“Myself, I am not making magical realism,” Jodorowsky explains, while describing how, like the writer Gabriel García Márquez, he learned to tell stories by listening to his grandmother narrate family history mixed and interspersed with dreams. “I am making real magic. Real magic because it continues, no? It is not an effect of magic; the magic is real.”

And this magic is not bound to the page or the screen.

Often in the midst of Jodorowsky’s work, one gets the sense that one isn’t just watching or reading, but that somehow the reach of the art extends out of the frame, invoking the surrounding world, the universe. The Holy Mountain famously ends with the revelation of the cameras and the production crew around them, the director himself proclaiming, “Nothing has an end…We must not stay here, prisoners! We shall break the illusion.” For Jodorowsky, the art of film does not end with the film itself, nor does the present end as it becomes past.

“Our unconscious works with the history of a lot of generations,” Jodorowsky tells me. “We are the product of that history, and the trees and lightning inside of a person want to live in the present, to live here and now. But here it is called the history of the universe, of the planet, and now we cannot say, ‘No, that is only the present,’ because we are the product of that past, and we must know from where we are coming to know where we are going.”

Jodorowsky lives his daily life without routine. He says he finds the greatest happiness in waking up beside the woman he loves, whom he often must ask what day it is. He doesn’t waste time brooding over his own neuroses or personal failures, nor does he fret over being creative every day.

“You cannot be great every year,” he says. “Do it that one time, wait to have something, then do other things.” He loves to read. He also, surprisingly or unsurprisingly, loves Twitter; each day from 12 to 1, he tweets, taking joy in seeing what people respond to the most.

For the past half-century, Jodorowsky has written dozens of books: graphic novels, plays, short story collections, poetry, essays, books on his films, spiritual texts, and surreal narratives, like Albina and the Dog-Men. In this tale, sexual desire for the hero, Albina, transforms men into dogs. This and other allegorical inversions illustrate a corrupt and fantastic world that feels cynical at times and, at others, almost optimistic, at least when it comes to beauty.

“I don’t believe in individuality anymore,” he explains. “I live it, but as the idea of having no own-ness, and having beauty. Everyone has personal beauty, and that is the role of literature, art: to show the other his own beauty, not our beauty, your beauty.”

That beauty, for Jodorowsky, has no price tag. It is not a vessel that can be bound by the margins and controls placed on it by those more interested in attracting crowds than making something timeless, sublime. This was proven when he notoriously walked away from years of work on a Books)—might not expect to find a message of such life- 14-hour adaptation of Dune when no studio would agree to affirming exuberance coming from a man whose halting foot the bill for the terms of his epic vision. imagery includes scenes in which a thief eats the face off of For Jodorowsky, this line in the sand where dollars and a mass-produced replica of Jesus Christ. That would only be logic intrude on the transcendent isn’t one that may be because they do not fully understand: Jodorowsky’s work is blurred; he would rather wait 30 years for the right oppornothing if not deeply spiritual, intensely dedicated to beauty, tunity than to compromise now. discovery, and enlightenment.

“Art is not a business,” Jodorowsky says calmly, without a “Today, for me, art is the way to discover who you are,” hint of doubt. “Art is art. If you make money, fantastic. Money Jodorowsky says, his voice ripe with conviction even through is not happiness, but without money you are not happy. So the filter of the computer speakers. “To heal this long histhen you do the work, and if you have money, fantastic, but tory full of wars, of blood, of economic difficulty—why would if you make the work to have money, it’s like a dog dancing you do that? What can we do? For me, I want to change the for a stick.” BLAKe BUtLeR world. And I cannot, but I can start to change it. And I cannot change myself, but I can start to change myself.”

ILLUStRAtIOn fRAnçOIS BOUCq In Jodorowsky’s work, the fact that the unexpected might albina and the dog-men is available may 10 from restless books

ELLIE BAMBER meet the RISING StARLet thAt hAS eveRyoNe fRom kARL LAGeRfeLd to tom foRd tALkING

V MAGAZINE 4 2

As Chanel’s newest ambassador, Bamber had a front row seat to the festivities, for which the fashion house created a fantastical fusion of French and Italian culture. And while the poised young actor speaks with a maturity and sense of self that is far beyond her years, a childlike glee sneaks out as she recalls the runway spectacular. “Oh, wow, it was incredible,” she coos. “It was my frst big show and it bombarded my senses. You had the set, the smells when they started cooking food—they had a fromagerie and a boulangerie—and the clothes were so beautiful. Each piece had such attention to detail. It was amazing because it was a combination of fashion and cinema—two things I really love.”

Chanel’s opulent déflé struck a chord with Bamber not because of its grandeur, but because fashion plays a large role in her cinematic career. “Along with music, fashion and flm really go together. Fashion is really important to my process when I’m developing a character.” This has been the case since Bamber’s stage debut, when she played the lead in a local community theater’s production of Annie. “My grandmother has a picture on her fridge of me all dressed up with my rags on, and it’s funny—it always reminds me of how it all started.”

Indeed Bamber, who has been acting since she was 11, has come a long way since her turn as everyone’s favorite little orphan and her latest role might just be her biggest one yet. After sending in an audition tape, Bamber landed

the part of Helen in Tom Ford’s forthcoming flm, Nocturnal Animals. “I play Jake Gyllenhaal and Isla Fisher’s daughter,” Bamber says. “Tom is a totally diferent director from anyone I’ve ever worked with. He creates the flm entirely, from the acting to the fashion. It’s wonderful how detailed he is, and I think it’s a very harrowing story, as well.” In fact, the script, which is based on Austin Wright’s 1993 novel, Tony and Susan, brought Bamber to tears. “I read it in about a half an hour fat. I was in a café, I ordered some food, I had the script in front of me, and I remember sitting there crying and reading.

The waiter came over and was like, ‘Are you still eating?’ And I hadn’t even started.”

Nocturnal Animals was partially shot in the Mojave Desert.

“I’d never been to a desert before, and I’m so pale that it sort of didn’t compute,” laughed the feryhaired (but naturally blond) English rose. Bamber has been traveling quite a bit these days, between the trip to Rome, frequent visits to L.A., and bouts flming in far-fung locales. She’s currently on the hunt for a fat in London, but her family’s home just outside the Big Smoke is never far from her heart. “My mum is my manager, and my family is really important to me. I honestly couldn’t have done this without them.” KATHARINE K. ZARRELLA

PHOTOGRAPHY CAsPER sEjERsEN FAsHION DONATELLA MusCO CLOTHING AND JEWELRY CHANEL FROM THE PARIS IN ROME COLLECTION

Makeup Ania Grzeszczuk (Calliste Agency) Hair Marcia Lee (Caren) Photo assistant Frederik Heide

Ellie Bamber is a triple threat. She acts, she sings, and she can twirl knives like a street fghter. The 19-year-old acquired that last skill while working on Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Burr Steers’s recent flm adaptation of Seth Grahame-Smith’s novel, which sees the Jane Austen classic set during a zombie apocalypse.

“When I heard the title of the project, I was a little shocked,” admits Bamber, who plays Lydia Bennet. “But my dad persuaded me to give it a chance. It’s actually very clever because it introduces this younger audience to the world of Jane Austen.” To learn how to fend of the walking dead, Bamber trained relentlessly, honing her combat skills with castmates Lily James and Sam Riley in a barn outside London. “One day [after rehearsal], I went into London with these fake green knives in my bag, and I remember thinking that I actually felt really protected. Obviously, they were plastic swords, but I had been training for quite a long time and I felt ready to conquer the world.”

Lately, Bamber has been doing just that. When I spoke with the British talent, she was just back from Chanel’s Paris in Rome Métiers d’Art show, which was held last December in the Eternal City’s famed Cinecittà. (For those unfamiliar, the iconic 1937 flm studio has been used for everything from La Dolce Vita, Roman Holiday, and Cleopatra, to Gangs of New York, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and Zoolander 2.)

“FASHION IS REALLY IMPORTANT TO MY PROCESS WHEN I’M DEVELOPING A CHARACTER.”—ELLIE BAMBER

THE a c t o r S

Y O U N G H O L L YW O O D

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NEVE ca m p b ell TWENTY YEARS LATER, THE QUEEN OF SCREAM IS BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE OF CARDS IN AN UNPRECEDENTED TeleVision RETURN Photography Thomas Giddings FASHION Naomi Miller

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the writing that Beau does, and all the other characters. I’ll absolutely watch it.”

When season three left off, the Iowa caucuses were just beginning. When season four picked up, the candidates were stacking delegates in a reality parallel to the one we were experiencing with Clinton, Sanders, Trump, and company in real time. “Each season has been timely in some way. I don’t think that is accidental on Beau’s part,” Campbell says.

“Making the choice this season to be around the political race was very conscious.” Playing Leann, Campbell says, has made her more attuned to the ins and outs of the business of American elections. “I’m more aware of what’s going on behind the scenes, what’s real, what’s not, and the antics that are being played out, especially with this campaign today. I think, during filming, we all felt like what’s going on at the moment in America is more showy than the choices you make as an actor for the show.”

Campbell’s political moment coincides with the 20th anniversary of both The Craft and Scream, two films that defined the edgy, self-aware, mid-to-late ’90s teen movie resurgence.

As Sidney Prescott, Campbell became her generation’s unrivaled scream queen, earning horror icon status which, unlike Ghostface, she’ll probably never outrun.

“I have been having these conversations because it is 20 years,” Campbell says, “and I’ve signed so many autographs recently. I’ve seen Skeet Ulrich, Matt Lillard, Rachel True, and different cast members from each film and it’s been really nice to revisit the movies with them, because we’ve realized that they still stand out. It’s nice to realize that we made some things then that entertain people enough that they still enjoy them now, and they’re getting passed down. If you’re in this business and you can say that you managed that on a few films, it’s such an accomplishment, because it’s a rarity.”

Like one would read a seasoned politician, it’s worth wondering if Campbell is testing the waters for a campaign to be leading lady. Maybe in Scream 5? “I would love to,” she says, assuredly. “We’ll see what comes, but absolutely. I would love to.” PATRIK SANDBERG

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“If you were to try to write about some of the clowns running depend on that to be appealing. It’s nice to play her because for president at the moment, I think you’d say it’s not possible. she’s strong and she’s unapologetic.” If it sounds like a far Nobody would buy it.” Having spent a handful of years out of cry from running away from Ghostface in the Scream franthe spotlight, Neve Campbell is throwing her hat into the preschise, the connecting thread might be that allure of staring idential race—on television, that is—as campaign strategist into the void, while leaving room for some dark humor to Leann Harvey on Netflix’s excoriating political series, House seep in at the edges. “The characters are reprehensible,” of Cards. A blood-pumping, accelerated take on the American Campbell says. “They’re dark. Beautifully dark. So, if you political circus, the series was first criticized for being too commit to that, I guess you’re playing into that energy.” over-the-top to be believed, with its characters resorting to After relocating to England for nine years to enjoy mothmurder and blackmail to earn their ranking offices. But, in erhood and step away from the business, Campbell has today’s electoral reality, as Campbell points out, truth might chosen to tiptoe back into the fray with small but eventful actually be more outlandish than fiction. roles on beloved series like Grey’s Anatomy and Mad Men, That isn’t to say that the show runs low on thrills. Joining slowly building her résumé back up at her own pace. “For series stars Kevin Spacey, Robin Wright, and Michael Kelly, me, coming back to America is about first, being present as Campbell is captivating viewers with her grand return to a mom in the way that I want to, and then, stepping back into the sort of high-drama TV that launched her career—who the industry by making smart choices that aren’t necessarily could forget Julia Salinger on Party of Five, brooding icon leading roles,” she says. “Small things that pop and say that of post-grunge adolescence, who turned teen angst into I am willing to work and can do a good job. Of course, when an art form and influenced a generation of young actresses House of Cards came around, for me it was ideal. I can be who’ve winced and exhaled in her resounding wake? Now a part of an ensemble that’s respected, in a great role, but a veteran of film, theater, dance, and TV—including Robert I don’t have to carry the show. I was asked to audition and Altman’s The Company, which she produced—Campbell is I was excited at the prospect. When I got it, I was superbly bringing a whole new level of graceful craft to the role of happy. I couldn’t have asked for it to be better, honestly.”

Harvey, an Underwood political hire with machinations that Campbell was initially a fan of the series, though motherwould make Karl Rove’s head spin. hood had put her behind on her Netflix queue. “I have a three“She is a very strong, driven, slightly calculating woman,” and-a-half-year-old, so I am always watching Daniel Tiger’s Campbell says of the character. “[Series creator] Beau Neighborhood or Power Rangers,” she says with a laugh. “But Willimon is always very clear about what he wants and we what I had seen of the show was fantastic.” had a good conversation about the character when I was Once she landed the part of Leann, she made sure to deciding to do the show. I liked the idea of a woman in this catch up through season three. “It was fun to be experiencpolitical world who already has a certain amount of success, ing the show, knowing I was going to be a part of it. But, at but is in a place where she is deciding what to do next, who the same time, it’s weird to then not just be entertained by is thrown into an arena of very strong men—and women— it, because you know you’re in it. When you really admire and has to stand on her own and climb. Getting to play a something, you just want to see it and be entertained. That’s character who gets to stand up to Frank Underwood or who how passionate I am about this show.” So, has being a part goes toe-to-toe with Claire was very appealing, because it’s of the shadowy action ruined the suspense for her as a fan? not often in female roles that you get to play someone who “Oh no,” she says. “I’ll keep watching it because I’m such a doesn’t have a huge amount of vulnerability, or who doesn’t fan of the other actors in the show, the choices they make,

“during filming, we all felt like what’s going on at the moment in America is more showy than the choices you make as an actor for [house of cards ].”—NEVE CAMPBELL

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the actorS

STARS OF SUNDANCE

each year, as award season hits maximum overDRIVE, hollywood decamps to park city, utah, to get A first glimpse OF next year’s contenders AT THE SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL. WITH HISTORIC SALES and miniseries premieres DIVERSIFYING THE MARKET, 2016 IS PROVING TO BE A BIG DEAL Photography CHARLIE ENGMAN fashion EMMA WYMAN

Lily-Rose Depp YOGA HOSERS

At the Sundance Midnight section premiere of Kevin Smith’s girl power teen horror comedy, Yoga Hosers, the excitement was at a fever pitch. Not only was the film to be Smith’s longawaited homage to his star-making first feature Clerks, it would also mark the first starring role for fashion’s number one crush: 16-year-old Lily-Rose Depp.

“It was so fun,” Depp exclaims of the screening. “I loved that the premiere took place at midnight. The vibes were good.” Good vibes seem to follow the budding star, the genetically blessed daughter of acclaimed actors Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis. In the year since she first turned heads at Chanel’s Paris-Salzburg Métiers d’Art show in New York, Lily-Rose has landed an eyewear campaign for the brand and pulled in over a million followers on her Instagram account, where she has developed a colonial-core, L.A.-angst aesthetic that’s all her own. Theatricality is most certainly in her blood, evidenced by her endearingly comic on-screen rapport with both her mom and her dad.

The two Depps, in fact, share topline billing in Yoga Hosers. “The most fun part of making the movie was being able to learn and experience everything for the first time with people I love and admire,” she says. These include not only the elder Depp, Paradis, and director Smith, but also Smith’s daughter and Depp’s real-life childhood BFF, Harley Quinn Smith.

Reprising their dual roles as the Colleens, two blonde high school sophomores who work at a late-night convenience store (characters that originated as cameos in Smith’s previous feature, Tusk), the younger Smith and Depp take us into their world. This includes trying to stay off their phones in class and showing off their vocal skills in their pop-punk band. A musical number proves Depp has singing chops, like her triple-threat mother, who plays a high school history teacher.

It also includes, as the title suggests, frequenting a strip mall yogi who teaches them

poses to help them deal with work drama, like the “disgruntled customer.”

“I am a little into yoga,” Depp says. “Not as much as my character is, but I like it.” A mash-up of genres, the film costars familiar faces like Natasha Lyonne, Tony Hale, Justin Long, Austin Butler, Adam Brody, Haley Joel Osment, and Stan Lee. It comes with a sci-fi creature twist that involves Nazis and bratwurst, something Smith attributes to his desire to create a film that appeals both to teenage girls and his comic book nerd fan base, citing both Clueless and Gremlins as references.

“I’ve actually seen both of those movies countless times,” Depp says. “I think Kevin couldn’t have said it better—consciously or not, I definitely drew inspiration from those films.” While the movie is of the irreverent variety, Depp’s acting and singing skills shine from the start. “I learned so much working on this movie,” she says. “Kevin really helped me come out of my shell as an actress. Being able to feel free and comfortable in your character’s skin is so important. I’m lucky I had such great people surrounding me to help me do that.”

Before the premiere of Hosers, Depp had just wrapped two other highly anticipated films in France. Thanks again to Paradis, she’s fluent in the language. In Planetarium, set in prewar Paris, Depp stars opposite Natalie Portman as her psychic sister. In The Dancer, she stars as Isadora Duncan, whose groundbreaking style has often been credited as the birth of modern dance. Duncan’s rival, Loie Fuller is played by another popular young chanteuse, Soko. With these coveted roles, encouragement from a Hollywood family, and endorsement from the fashion community, Depp is all set to dance her way onto audiences’ screens and into their hearts. GREG KRELENSTEIN

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natasha lyonne ANTIBIRTH

Arriving in Park City with three films in tow, Natasha Lyonne was quite possibly the most popular lady at Sundance. “It was moving for me to have a movie with Clea [DuVall] and a movie with Chloë [Sevigny] in the same year,” Lyonne says. “They are my two best friends of twenty years. The only two times I’d been at Sundance before were once with Clea in the ’90s for But I’m A Cheerleader, and once with Chloë in 2003 for Party Monster, so it was funny to be there all at once. And we were all there in a filmmaker capacity: Chloë had directed her first short film, I had produced Antibirth, and Clea had written, directed, starred in, and produced her first movie. Not in my wildest fantasies did I imagine it would be this cool to be pushing 40—which I think we should talk about at length.”

Since her 1986 debut on Pee-wee’s Playhouse, Lyonne has amassed a long list of film credits. It was her role on Orange Is the New Black, though, that truly brought her out of a relative period of obscurity following her successes as a teen actor, a provenance that now enables her to help get films financed. “I am so grateful to [OITNB creator] Jenji Kohan,” Lyonne says. “I get to do that show, and I get to make a bunch of independent movies. I’m glad I took a break, though. I think having whatever version of your own nervous breakdown is a healthy thing. It’s a natural instinct to drop out of life for a second.”

Lyonne prides herself on gravitating to the weirder end of the movie spectrum. “[Antibirth] is a fascinating picture,” she says, in the tone of a Hollywood big-wig. “It’s like gonzo filmmaking. If Hunter S. Thompson was a 30-something actress, this would be the kind of role

he’d be seeking out. [Director] Danny Perez’s brains are just explosive. It’s so far out there that Chloë and I were actually laughing in the screening, which is rare. Usually you’re so busy being uptight and nervous about your own performance, but this movie transcends that because it’s so out to lunch.”

In the horror film about a bad trip that results in a bizarre, accelerated pregnancy, Lyonne plays Lou, a military veteran and obsessive drug user who finds herself possibly in the center of a military medical conspiracy. “There is a thread of people wanting to take the piss out of things and have a sense of humor about filmmaking,” she says. This could include Kevin Smith and his Yoga Hosers, which features Lyonne as a trash-talking stepmother to Lily-Rose Depp in a teen gross-out comedy that reads as Clueless or Clerks, but high on energy drinks. “At a certain point you want to start subverting the mechanism. The presumption is that you’ve already bought the ticket, so now we’re going to take you for a ride.”

When it came to playing DuVall’s love interest in The Intervention, Lyonne says, “Any opportunity to make out with Clea is something I jump at. She also cast me against type.

It’s like But I’m A Cheerleader: she’s the tough guy, and I’m the one with the blow out and pink blouses. I’m excited for her to direct her next movie, and I should only hope to be so lucky that she will ask me to play her girlfriend again.” PATRIK SANDBERG

COAT DIOR JEWELRY LyONnE’S OWN

Their careers will no doubt rocket in two different directions, but Michael Barbieri, 14, and Theo Taplitz, 13, owe their next phases of work to a stellar tandem acting effort. Their portrayal of neighbors and best buds in Ira Sachs’s latest exploration of Brooklyn gentrification, Little Men, pits the young actors’ strengths against an adult landscape that, for all too familiar reasons, can’t handle such an unlikely friendship.

Playing these characters—the shy son of a theater actor and a psychiatrist, Jake (Taplitz), and the outgoing only child of a financially struggling single mother, Tony (Barbieri)—has made fast friends of the actors, too. For reasons of physical location, though, they might similarly struggle to keep this bond intact. Taplitz lives in Los Angeles, while Barbieri lives in “downtown Manhattan” and, like his character Tony, plans on attending the famous LaGuardia High School for acting. (At the time of our conversation, he had one week left before hearing the verdict on his audition.)

“Neither of us had met before [shooting],” says Taplitz, pronouncing each syllable, “but after the movie, I think it’s safe to say we are both friends.” Barbieri backs him up in a confident tone that brings to mind a young Marlon Brando: “When I first met Theo in Brooklyn, we talked and we skated. We had similar interests and became good friends, but as we filmed, we became great friends.”

Both say that working with Sachs was an invaluable first film experience, and not just

theo TAPLITZ & michaEL BARBIERI LITTLE MEN

because it took them to Sundance. “Ira actually told me something that I will remember for the rest of my acting career,” says Taplitz, “which is that less is more. And you never want to push anything out, you want everything to be very real and very true and honest.”

This advice is honored beautifully when Jake finds out that Tony has to move away, and cries. Finding that emotion wasn’t difficult, says Taplitz, as long as he remembered the real sadness the story described. “You just really need to feel it. For instance, in that scene, I came to this realization in my character that suddenly everything was going to change and my friend was going to be gone, and also that hinting feeling that my parents were not the people who I thought they might have been. That was heartbreaking. In that moment, I just really felt truly sad. It’s about feeling the emotion and the real, raw ingredients that are coming from the experience.”

“I was so honored and so lucky to have my first feature film be with Ira, and with such a great cast,” says Barbieri, of Sachs and actors Greg Kinnear, Jennifer Ehle, Talia Balsam, and Alfred Molina. “Ira always told me, ‘Whatever you want to do, do it. Don’t ask me for permission if you feel this is what your character would do.’ It’s very cool to have a director that always had my back—it was just an amazing experience I won’t forget.” NATASHA STAGG

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REBECCA HALL CHRISTINE

“When the script landed on my doorstep, I was in a really dark frame of mind,” says Rebecca Hall of Christine, the true story of Christine Chubbuck, a Sarasota morning show correspondent who committed suicide live on the air in 1974. “I pushed it into the corner of an apartment I was living in and it upset me every time I looked at it.”

Hall was in the midst of her debut Broadway performance run in Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal, a play about Ruth Snyder, the first woman to be photographed while executed in the electric chair. “I was incredibly trepidatious about something based on a true story,” she says. “The story is so shocking that it does play on your mind. [Chubbuck] forced her tragedy on the public consciousness. It’s out there in the world. But when I read the script, I realized that what it was trying to do was artistically explore the questions that she left us with. I thought that was actually extraordinarily brave and important. After one read, I knew I had to do it.”

Even with past projects as diverse as Vicky Cristina Barcelona, The Prestige, and Iron Man 3, it took some convincing for director Antonio Campos to find Hall’s range right for the part. “I don’t think a lot of what I’d done up until this point would suggest I was a slam dunk for it,” she says. Hall is English and seems preternaturally poised, whereas Chubbuck was an Ohio native living in south Florida with a wooden unease about her. “And it took a while to get everything together,” Hall adds. “It wasn’t like everyone was like, ‘Yeah, great, I’ll throw money at that.’”

Indeed, the subject of the film—the disturbing depiction of a woman careening toward her own public self-slaughter—isn’t particularly marketable. But the resulting film is an astonishing, stylized portrait of one of the most oddly sympathetic characters to hit Sundance since Dawn Wiener in Welcome to the Dollhouse. Apart from its inherent darkness, the film is oftentimes suspenseful, moving, and even funny. Costarring Michael C. Hall as a charmingly oblivious co-reporter and a pitch-perfect Tracy Letts as the incensed news director, Christine is anchored by Hall’s tour de force performance, easily one of the most uncanny of her career. In terms of research, “I didn’t really have much,” she says. “Antonio was very clear that he wanted me to create Christine from the script. What I had was about 20 minutes of her doing one episode of her show that the writer [Craig Shilowich] gave to me. I was able to pull sound from it and listen to her voice for part of each day.”

Following the premiere, Hall is confident that the right message comes across. “There is something unusual about seeing a film with a woman at the center who isn’t saved by a man—who’s not saved by anyone—and who is deeply problematic,” she says. “There’s a luxury in storytelling to be able to make comprehensible that which is incomprehensible.

You add to the world’s capacity for compassion and empathy, and I think it is an empathetic film. And I think it’s really original, which is really rare.” PS

VEST DKNY DRESS (UNDERNEATH) VICTORIA BECKHAM

Riley Keough is no child star. On the contrary, the choices the 27-year-old makes—like the ones to star opposite Jena Malone in So Yong Kim’s Lovesong or in Starz’s The Girlfriend Experience, executive-produced by Steven Soderbergh—are clearly her own. She’d developed a relationship with Kim after Kim directed their collaborative short for Miu Miu’s “Women’s Tales” series, while she’d met Soderbergh when he directed her in Magic Mike. The daughter of Lisa Marie Presley and Danny Keough (yes, that means her stepfathers included Michael Jackson and Nicholas Cage), Riley has had the luxury of seeing superstardom from so close up, she can’t help but handle her own career with discretion and poise: a modeling gig here, small but powerful performances in The Runaways and Mad Max: Fury Road there.

It’s a steep climb, but Keough is determined to be in control of her image—and to make her name all her own.

In fact, in both Lovesong and the aforementioned 13-episode series, her characters are in constant fear of giving away too much of their selves. In other words, for both projects, restraint from Keough was tantamount. “They definitely are both naturalistic in tone,” she says, of her two Sundance premieres. “I do tend to enjoy working with directors who like that aesthetic.”

The TV show, written and directed by Amy Seimetz and Lodge Kerrigan, happens to share the name of Soderbergh’s 2009 film, which starred Sasha Grey as an escort named Christine, but who goes by Chelsea. A few years back, Soderbergh expressed to Keough

Riley Keough THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE

that he was interested in exploring GFE (as Keough calls it) further, but from someone else’s angle. “I guess, for whatever reason, he thought I’d play [Christine/Chelsea] well,” says Keough. “He had Lodge and Amy meet me to make sure I wasn’t crazy or whatever and we all got along. He’d picked them to direct the show. I think they got some notes from him, but Steven basically put together a group of people and let us go do our thing.”

To be clear, Starz’s GFE isn’t quite the same story as Soderbergh’s, and Christine isn’t the same character. “The shared name is sort of a cheeky thing,” says Keough. “The show wasn’t based on the film, it just has the same subject matter.” For a television debut, that subject matter would scare some, but Keough insists that playing an escort wasn’t what made her second-guess signing on. “I was definitely nervous. I had never done TV before.

I’d heard that you get to set and you have to do everything very robotically. I was nervous about the freedom to have opinions about things because I am...opinionated,” she laughs.

The rumors, she assures, in this case weren’t true, but those nerves may have come in handy for a provocative performance. “I definitely don’t have a problem doing sex scenes, but I tend to like to do things that initially make me feel a bit nervous. I don’t think you can really grow at any job unless you do things that freak you out. And I’m sure GFE will make people uncomfortable, but I have fun doing that.” NS

DRESS GUCCI

NICK JONAS GOAT

While most newcomers to the Sundance red carpet look stunned in the glare of its flashbulbs, Nick Jonas’s arrival created a frenzy that even the event’s most in-demand attendees likely found overwhelming. The pop sensation is used to attention of the squealing teenage girl variety paid to his efforts, but for the past couple of years, his focus has been on fielding more adult material. As many a former Disney Channel star has proven, it’s a difficult transition to make gracefully in this echo chamber that is the press.

“At first, it really was all about showing people that I mean business in the acting space,” Jonas says of his auditions for more serious roles, like his MMA fighting character on DirecTV’s original series, Kingdom. “I think there was some bias towards my previous work.” That bias is perhaps, in part, a reluctance towards any implications an established audience brings. In the instance of the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, for example, the teenaged fanfare surrounding Jonas’s appearance felt especially mismatched. He’s promoting the Andrew Neel-directed Goat.

Based on the Brad Land memoir, the title refers to a fraternity’s threat when hazing freshman pledges: if one can’t endure the tests proposed, he will be forced to have intercourse with an ominously present goat.

“It is definitely hard to watch at times,” Jonas says of the depicted violence. “What’s scary is that this isn’t really an exaggeration of what that culture can be like, the fraternity culture.“ He plays Brad (Ben Schnetzer)’s older brother, who, unlike Jonas’s mostly clean

public image, parties hard.

The youngest Jonas Brother is walking a line that few before him have managed to traverse without isolating a demographic. “Watching different actors make the kind of transition I’m hoping to make has been helpful,” he says. “Mark Wahlberg has done an incredible job of starting in one place and building an unbelievable career. Matthew McConaughey is the best example of someone that has made that dramatic shift.”

The Broadway veteran lists esoteric, dialogue-driven films as inspirations. “A couple years ago Annie Hall became a really important film to me,” he says. “The writing style, but also the human elements to all of Woody Allen’s movies. And if I could do a movie like The Graduate at some point, that would be a dream come true.” For now, he’s preparing to drop one of the most anticipated albums of the year, the decidedly adult solo follow up to 2014’s Nick Jonas, Last Year Was Complicated.

With Goat, he’s just happy that, judging by the reviews, director Neel’s sensitivity to the subject is felt. “You hope that people are moved by the material—that it pushes the dialogue forward,” he says. “I think those things happened.” NS

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The coming-of-age narrative can often be truncated to supernatural tropes in film—puberty is likened to vampire rebirths, werewolf awakenings, and fairy godmother visits. In Anna Rose Holmer’s narrative directorial debut, The Fits, though, a dance team’s right of passage “fits” fall within the spectrum of the possible. “I looked at a bunch of [hysteria] cases, and what’s in the film is definitely based on a real phenomenon,” says Holmer, “but we wanted it to be more magical and allegorical than just symptom-based.”

Then nine-year-old Royalty Hightower is the film’s breakout lead. Surrounded by her reallife Cincinnati dance troupe Q-Kidz, who play a similar drill team, she carefully traverses the exciting world of female bonding, going from a boxing tomboy to a hopeful drill dancer, and subsequently witnessing young girls like herself convulsing during rehearsal.

Hightower, for her part, says she found the process of individualizing her “fit” to be the most difficult part of her first acting gig. “Miss Anna never told me the cause of it, but I did some work with Miss Celia [Rowlson-Hall], the choreographer, for my fit,” she says, back in Ohio after a whirlwind trip to Park City. “She said to make it our own, like each fit was different. Like something that was yours.” Holmer adds: “All of the fits were designed in isolation. The girls got to choreograph them with Celia one-on-one, with my input, and that’s why none of the girls’ fits look like each other. They were modes of expressions, like dance.

ROYALTY HIGHTOWER THE FITS

We never defined in a concrete way what a fit was or wasn’t because we wanted the girls to have freedom to explore in that space.”

Holmer, who has assisted on films like Twilight and Tiny Furniture and the documentary Teenage, is, even at this early stage in her directing career, an expert on the depiction of growing up female. The Fits provides a sensitive, subtle take on that most compelling of phases—and it discovers a star. After finding YouTube videos of the Q-Kidz, Holmer was on a mission. “We weren’t even casting any dance teams, I was just looking for a dance form,” she recalls. I instantaneously fell in love with them, called their coach, and flew to Cincinnati.”

Holmer next held auditions for the lead, who she pictured as a 13-year-old. Hightower somehow made it into the auditorium, though, and after an incredible reading, the team decided to cast her as 11-year-old Toni.

Since Sundance, The Fits was picked up by Oscilloscope Laboratories and glowingly reviewed. “It was my first time at Sundance,” says Holmer. “It was really special to share that with Royalty.” NS

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clea duvall THE INTERVENTION

“I’ve wanted to direct for probably 10 years,” says Clea DuVall, the 38-year-old actor who’s appeared in everything from an episode of Law & Order to the Oscar Best Picture winner Argo. Since breaking out in the late ’90s with films like The Faculty and Girl, Interrupted, DuVall set a goal of directing a film before the age of 30. When the time came, though, she became hesitant.

“I wrote this and didn’t even intend to direct it,” she says of her directorial debut, The Intervention. “Through trying to find someone else, I realized that I wanted to direct it and that I wasn’t afraid anymore.” A modern-day update on The Big Chill, the film finds a group of friends coming together at a vacation house in Savannah, Georgia—some of them with the goal of staging an intervention to break up a marriage. Starring Melanie Lynskey as the alcoholic, meddlesome ringleader of the gathering, the film shows the consequences of interfering in other people’s lives. “The story came from me being in a place in my life where I spent a lot of time focusing on other people and what I thought they should be doing,” DuVall says. “I would just silently judge. Then I had this moment of realization that I was in a bad place, that I should have been spending more time looking at myself. It sent me on a journey of self-discovery and of being honest with myself about certain things that I had never really looked at. Writing the script and making an effort to become a more whole person felt parallel.”

As Annie, Lynskey represents the comedic endpoint for DuVall’s self-examination, in

a performance that earned her a Special Jury Award at the festival. “I think she is the greatest actress of our generation,” DuVall says, emphatically. “I’m always inspired by everything she does, even as a human being. She was the one person who was in my mind as her character from beginning to end. She’s my best friend. She read every draft of the script and we talked about the characters a lot. When she won that prize, I was overjoyed.” DuVall’s other best friend, Natasha Lyonne, plays DuVall’s character’s girlfriend in the film, a winking throwback to their romance in But I’m a Cheerleader. “She and I have such a rich history and so much intimacy in our friendship that it really lent itself to be able to play girlfriends in a way that felt authentic,” she says. Cobie Smulders, Alia Shawkat, Jason Ritter, and Ben Schwartz round out the ensemble. “All the characters are different versions of me: different phases that I’ve gone through and stages of different roles that I’ve played in relationships.”

The Intervention has garnered enough critical praise to ensure that DuVall will have more opportunities to direct in the near future. “I would like to work on something that I didn’t write because that would be a nice challenge,” she says. “I also want to work with new people and people who aren’t my best friends, who don’t have an added interest in seeing me do well.”

Filmmaking, it turns out, is a lot like a relationship: “Both the highs and the lows are exciting.” PS

JUMPSUIT TOMMY HILFIGER SHOES CARVEN

In late March, on Amandla Stenberg’s Instagram account—which has arguably become more popular than any of the TV spots in which she’s costarred—a poem appeared. It begins: “1.

What is the misfortune of the minority mistress? / I have understood the body of a white woman / Before I have understood my own.” Since becoming known for such parts as the young Cataleya in Colombiana and Rue in The Hunger Games, Stenberg has often voiced such transporting revelations, making her a role model for thousands of young girls. With this audience in mind, Stenberg has shied away from big budgets and misrepresentations of women of color. That’s why As You Are, the first feature film from director Miles JorisPeyrafitte—and Stenberg’s first starring role—marks such a meaningful step in her career.

The film is set in the early 1990s, but Stenberg says the story could take place in any decade. “Angsty adolescence is a pretty universal and timeless thing. I had a huge punk phase when I was in 9th grade, so I found myself pulling from those angsty feelings that I experienced. I would go to punk venues every weekend and mosh and wear a lot of buttons on my denim jacket, everything.”

Joris-Peyrafitte Skyped with Stenberg before meeting her. “He told me the reason he cast me was I asked him a lot of questions,” she laughs. “I was almost criticizing the way he portrayed women [in the script]—asking about it. He was like, ‘Okay, you need to be in my movie.’” As You Are describes the shifting relationships between three teenagers, and

amandla stenberg AS YOU ARE

although their situation is hardly uncommon when it comes to real life, mainstream teen movies don’t really go there. Stenberg could relate. “I found myself in it, being a teenager, and not necessarily knowing how you identify, and not really understanding where your feelings are coming from all of the time,” she says. “When I was reading the script I saw myself in Sarah, who was trying to find herself through her friends, but trying new things, trying to break out of the mold that she has been placed in.”

Perhaps most importantly to Stenberg, this is the soon-to-be NYU film student’s first role in an independent film. “I experienced some disillusionment with the film industry at one point,” she says, after a reaffirming trip to Sundance. “Maybe that was real disillusionment or my actual teenage angst coming through, but I just had that feeling of, Man, the film industry, it’s just about money. I really love the artwork—the making of film—and I experienced that on The Hunger Games and Colombiana, but I also wanted to have the experience of becoming instantly close to everyone on set and getting to collaborate with them.

And As You Are provided that for me. It showed me that yes, this is something I can do.” GK

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“I’ve only been to Sundance once before,” Chloë Sevigny admits. It’s a surprise, considering the actress’s prolific output in the realm of indie cinema. “It was 2003, for Party Monster, and I went with Natasha [Lyonne]. It was this big turning point with the gifting lounges and Paris Hilton. I don’t know if I was too young or not self-aware, but it felt like it was a lot of partying. This year it felt like everybody was there for the movies.”

It’s a year that brings Sevigny back to the festival with her good friend Lyonne, thanks to their horror film Antibirth, which premiered at the festival’s Midnight section. Directed by Danny Perez, who is known for his work with Animal Collective and I.U.D., it’s a startlingly surreal feature debut. “It’s a wild, wild movie. It’s like early Cronenberg meets David Lynch—a classic midnight movie,” Sevigny says. “It was a fun project that people got involved in to help out our buddy, who we have a real belief in.”

Sevigny also reunited with friends Whit Stillman and Kate Beckinsale, both of whom she worked with on the 1998 film The Last Days of Disco. Now they’re inhabiting Jane Austen’s 18th-century England in the short story adaptation, Love & Friendship. “My first true period,” she deadpans. “I started my Instagram account when I was on set in Ireland and one of my first posts was in my wardrobe with the hashtag #myfirstperiod. It’s part of the reason I got into acting. I remember seeing Annie when I was in kindergarten and of course Little House on the Prairie was a huge influence on me. I always wanted to live in a different time. I think people think of me as being so contemporary, so it’s nice to be thought of in different ways.”

In the film, Sevigny plays Alicia, the best friend of the devilishly manipulative Lady Susan, a financially strapped widow conniving to find rich husbands for herself and her daughter.

“It’s so catty and so funny,” Sevigny says of the story. It is an atypical Austenian romance,

perhaps more Whit than Jane, but “it was a lot of fake hair.” Though she learned the role with an English accent, in the end Stillman decided to make her character American for U.S. audiences’ sake. “I was like, ‘Everyone is going to think I can’t do the accent! We can’t do that,’ and he was like, ‘No, I’ll include all these fun jokes. I’ll write a joke about how you might have to return to Connecticut.’” The joke lands (Sevigny hails from Darien, CT). “Alicia likes the socialite life that she has in London, and Connecticut was very provincial at the time.

She’s dreading going back in the same way I would have, in my 20s, if someone threatened to send me back there.”

At press time, Sevigny is traveling to Norway to film a crime drama with Michael Fassbender called The Snowman, directed by Tomas Alfredson (Let the Right One In). “I’m playing twins,” she divulges with glee. It’s the latest in a crush of darker work Sevigny has had over the past few years, notably in TV: American Horror Story, Bloodline, and Those Who Kill. When asked about her relentless work ethic, Sevigny laughs. “Nobody else is paying those bills. I just landed a part in the Oren Moverman movie playing Richard Gere’s first wife. Hopefully, I’m going to be doing this movie with Salma Hayek that Mike White wrote. I feel like I’m making a return to film and that’s what I’m trying to focus on. I’m excited to get back and do stuff that I grew up doing, that I love. Hopefully, once I pay my dues, I can find a juicier part in a movie, like the ones I had in Boys Don’t Cry or Kids. I’ve only really had two meaty roles in movies and I want to find more. I’m just trying to work!” PS

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Ben Schnetzer played a gay activist in 1980s UK (Pride), a Jewish refugee in 1940s Germany (The Book Thief), a hopeless New Romantic in 2000s Utah (Punk’s Dead: SLC Punk 2), and a wizard in Azeroth (Warcraft), among other roles, before shooting the raw college-age drama Goat (based on the memoir by Brad Land), in which he stars. “It certainly isn’t like I’m reading scripts thinking I need to do something really different,” he laughs. “But you want to stretch yourself and challenge yourself; that’s really the major turn on when you’re going into work.”

He plays fraternity pledge Brad, younger brother of fraternity member Brett (Nick Jonas).

The film only spans a few weeks and so leaves itself no room to shy away from any gory details of the hazing process Brad endures (while Brett oversees). Every scene is measured with purpose: a cameo by executive producer James Franco, for example, serves as reminder that fraternities are indeed for life. “We had I think four weeks to shoot it,” says Schnetzer.

“The subject matter is quite intense, so we just went into fifth gear to finish it. It serves the film in the end—I think it would have been difficult to maintain that momentum over the course of a three-month shoot.” Goat is in an almost uncomfortably high gear film from start to finish; much like the hazing rituals it depicts, watching it feels like a test of endurance if only because it looks to be—and is based on something—so real. “When we were shooting the hazing stuff, if it was a question of should we do it for real or should we not, we always did it for real,” Schnetzer says. “But there were a few moments—the humiliation scenes,

ben schnetzER GOAT

like where they made us get in a pyramid in our underwear, and it was weird; that was a lot harder than any of the physical stuff.”

Perhaps like joining a frat, the struggle made soaking up the film’s success at Sundance all the more enjoyable. Not that Schnetzer or Jonas had much life experience on which to compare the payoff. “[Director Andrew Neel] and I were joking around about how we have this movie about a fraternity and a bunch of actors who either didn’t go to college or who all went to acting school,” Schnetzer says. And research proved slightly more difficult than the actor had imagined. “A buddy of mine was in a fraternity and he just didn’t talk about it. It wasn’t like he signed a code of silence. He was just like, ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’”

After everything, the film was met with more than critical acclaim. “I guess Nick is used to those high-intensity events,” Schnetzer says of Sundance. “He reminded me a couple times to just take it in, look around, and enjoy the work we put into this. There was a moment on the carpet during the premiere when there was a million flashes going off and he just grabbed my shoulder and was like, ‘Dude, look at this.’ All of a sudden things just parted and time slowed down.” NS

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JENA MALONE LOVESONG

“There’s an interesting relationship between an actor’s control over the jobs they pick and destiny—what comes to them for a specific reason,” says Jena Malone, who returned to Sundance this year for So Yong Kim’s Lovesong. “It tends to work in an interesting way. There will be aspects the character is going through that I’m going through in my own life, or they’re on a journey that I’m about to go on. There’s this mutual mirror effect.”

In Lovesong, Malone’s once wayward character is settling down—implausibly if you ask her former bestie, played by Riley Keough. But the guitar-playing fiancée, the outdoor wedding, the supportive new circle of friends could all actually work out, just like Malone’s dreamy real-life romance has. Unlike her last trip to Park City in 2007, she says, she didn’t party or stay out late once, seeing as she is pregnant with her first child.

Malone and Keough were never listed as costars before now, but they met, Keough tells me, on the set of Bradley Rust Gray’s Jack & Diane in 2012. Malone’s part was edited out of the final version. Coincidentally, we’re speaking a few days after it was announced that Malone’s part in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice didn’t make the cut. The news was a trending topic for days, proving the size and drive of her fan base. Since costarring in the three Hunger Games sequels, Malone’s roles in cult films like Donnie Darko and Saved! have only become more celebrated, so the attention Dawn of Justice got for dropping her scene wasn’t very good-natured. Malone isn’t taking it personally.

“It’s only the second time that this has ever happened in 20 years,” she asserts. “A similarity

between both of these instances is that I was working with friends. Someone came in and said, ‘Hey, there’s this part, come and play,’ and I said, ‘Of course I’ll come.’ I tend to put a lot of love into things, and I’ve heard that sometimes I get too crazy, so maybe I’m not the best woman to come in to act for a day. But the reasons why the character is cut out could be a million, trillion things.”

Nicolas Winding Refn’s forthcoming thriller The Neon Demon is one film in which Malone’s role is critical. When I mention I’ve seen a screener, she exhales. “Nic doesn’t just hire an actor, he hires a body, mind, and soul. As much as you want to give him, he will take. If you just want to work with him as an actor, he’s fine with that, but if you want to work with him metaphysically, he will allow you to basically be possessed. I fucking loved working with him. Literally, sometimes I felt it was a full body possession. I had an out of body experience, twice, being on set. Afterwards, I was like, Holy shit, who knows what it’s going to look like—I wasn’t there for it.” She plays a makeup artist who lusts after her clients—and stops at nothing to satisfy her desires. If there’s one similarity between the characters Malone lately chooses, it’s their unwavering conviction. “I love strong women—I can’t help it,” she says. “I’m drawn to these characters, obviously, and I even tend to want to play strength into places where there is none on the page.” NS

COAT MAX MARA

It’s hard to believe that this year’s Sundance Film Festival marked the first for Toronto-born Sarah Gadon. The 29-year-old indie darling has developed somewhat of a cult following among film buffs, thanks to her roles in not one, but three David Cronenberg features (A Dangerous Method, Cosmopolis, and Maps to the Stars). Gadon’s newest endeavor comes with the same kind of built-in following: Indignation, the adaption of Philip Roth’s 2008 novel, has landed her a spot at the top of just about every must-watch list to come out of the festival.

Gadon had yet to read Roth’s novel when she auditioned for the part. Still, the actor had little difficulty bringing the troubled character of Olivia Hutton to life, thanks to the academic tutelage of director James Schamus. “James is also a university professor, so making this movie with him was a lot like taking a course. He gave us reading material, references, and a lot of homework,” gushes Gadon, whose enthusiasm on the subject demonstrates a genuine dedication and love for the craft. “He believes that Philip Roth had women like Sylvia Plath in the front of his mind when crafting Olivia as a character, so I revisited a lot of Plath’s work and read her journals. I think getting into her head space really helped me identify with Olivia and lift her off the page.”

Set in 1950s America, in the midst of the Korean War, Indignation follows Marcus Messner (played by Logan Lerman) as he recounts his experiences at Winesburg College in Ohio, where he’d met Olivia, a suicide attempt survivor whose dark, quirky persona quickly became the object of his desire. The attraction between the two characters culminates when they

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drive to a cemetery after their first date, and she performs oral sex on him—a scene that Gadon recalls with a mix of pride and mortification. “Logan and I had spent so much time with the script that I felt totally at ease and completely comfortable when we were shooting the scenes. Then, when I watched them at Sundance, I was completely embarrassed! I couldn’t believe that I had done that.”

While it is a period piece, Gadon believes (and rightfully so) that younger audiences will have much to connect with in the story: “Philip Roth writes about young people at a time when they were bumping up against the power structures of America. He paints a very dismal picture about what it meant to be on the outside. That’s something you can identify with today.”

Incidentally, Gadon is coming off the heels of another adaption of a period novel, 11.22.63, the eight-part Hulu series costarring James Franco, based on the book by Stephen King.

“It was great because I did mid-’50s right into early ’60s, so I was just following the chronology of American politics. I feel like one of the best and most exciting things I get to do as an actor is to just lose myself in someone, and I really get the opportunity to do that when it’s someone from another time.” WILLIAM DEFEBAUGH

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LUCas HEDGEs MANCHESTER BY THE SEA

Back in Winston-Salem, where Lucas Hedges studies theater, he is still shell-shocked from Sundance. “Seeing that many celebrities in a two-day span warps your perception of reality,” he says. “Celebrities don’t live in the same universe as me. It was very disturbing.”

It’s a funny response from someone who is technically film industry royalty. “I actually went to Sundance when I was five with my dad’s movie, Pieces of April, but I don’t remember it,” Hedges explains. Lucas is the son of Peter Hedges, an Oscar-nominated screenwriter, author, and director best known for What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. But, despite growing up around film sets and theaters (his mother is a stage actress), Hedges’s childhood was as normal as could be. “I always thought Gilbert Grape was just an indie film that no one really knew about,” he says. It wasn’t until his teen years that the magnitude sank in, along with an obsessive love of movies. After performing in a seventh-grade play, a casting director spotted him and asked him to audition for Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom, a part he landed. “From that point on, I’ve wanted to be an actor for the rest of my life,” he says. Nearly every role that’s followed has fortuitously been with a celebrated director: Jason Reitman (Labor Day), Terry Gilliam (The Zero Theorem), Anderson part deux (The Grand Budapest Hotel), and now Kenneth Lonergan in the drama Manchester by the Sea. “I knew something was fucked up when I read the script,” Hedges recalls, “and I mean it in the best possible way, because it was one of the best scripts I’ve ever read in my life. I

talked to my dad and he said, ‘Oh, Kenneth is a good friend; we were in the same playwriting circle in New York in the ’90s.’ Then I watched You Can Count on Me and was like, This guy is unlike any other American filmmaker today.”

In Manchester, Hedges plays a 16-year-old who is taken into the custody of his wayward uncle (Casey Affleck) when his father (Kyle Chandler) suddenly dies. Praised for its performances, the film is already earning award buzz. “This character has gone through more than I’ve experienced,” Hedges says. “His life is a million times harder. One day I was having trouble and Kenny said, ‘Well, forget about the words. What matters to you?’ He is so specific in his writing but at the same time he’s willing to let go of it and everything that makes it special in order to find the truth.”

Next, Hedges is spending his summer break shooting Martin McDonagh’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, with Frances McDormand and Woody Harrelson. Still, Hedges finds it difficult to adjust to the reality of being in the movie biz.

“I never really thought it would be possible to keep making films,” he says. “I thought I’d get to a point where it would just stop happening, and I still sort of feel that way. I don’t know if any actor feels like they are going to have a career forever, unless they’re a movie star.” Kid, join the club. PS

SHIRT PRADA

Hair (Natasha Lyonne and Chloë Sevigny) Emma Parkes Hair (Clea DuVall) Darbie Wieczorek Hair (Gabrielle Union) Larry Sims (Forward Artists) Production Sylvia Farago LTD Digital technician Jonathan Hokklo Photo assistant Michael Tessler Stylist assistant Coco Campbell Grooming assistant Tammy Yi Equipment ACME Camera Company

Makeup, Hair, Grooming Erin Skipley using Dior Beauty (Cloutier Remix) Makeup (Natasha Lyonne and Chloë Sevigny) Tsipporah using M.A.C. Cosmetics Grooming (Nick Jonas) Thea Istenes (Exclusive Artists Management) Makeup (Clea DuVall) Elle Favorule Makeup (Gabrielle Union) Carola Gonzalez (Forward Artists)

“I had been joking with my manager for years that the movie I really wanted to make was the Nat Turner story. I didn’t think anyone would have the balls to actually do it.” Gabrielle Union’s sharp sense of humor precedes her. The girl who stole America’s heart in Bring It On is now an industry stalwart, known not only for her work in film and TV comedies, but for also being the type of celebrity that people love to love. The tabloids follow her, the talk shows book her, and whenever she gives a sound bite, you know it’s going to be good. At the time that we speak, she’s sent the Internet into adoration overdrive by throwing “eloquent shade” at Fox News correspondent Stacey Dash.

Never one to rest on her laurels, this year Union is taking everything you think you know about her and turning it inside out by appearing in Nate Parker’s Audience Award and Grand Jury Prize-winning film about Nat Turner and the rebellion he led in 1831, the biggest slave revolt in U.S. history. Titled The Birth of a Nation, it’s a counternarrative to D. W. Griffith’s proKKK silent film of the same name from 1915. The 2016 film was Sundance’s biggest sale of all time, netting $17.5 million.

“I got the script and it sat on my desk because I thought, Who the F would remake Birth of a Nation? That’s racist propaganda BS. After I hadn’t responded, they told me that it’s the Nat Turner story—they’ve reclaimed the title. So I read it, and then I began to stalk Nate. I’ve never been more dogged in my pursuit to be a part of something in my career.”

In the film, Union gives an unrecognizable supporting performance as a slave who is raped by a white man. “There was some fear on my part, as a sexual assault survivor, that it was too close,” Union says. “I’ve never played a rape survivor on screen because of the fact that I lived it, and I was always very strict about that. But, with this, I just felt that it was so important. I felt like there was no one better to portray Esther than me and, if I can get right with my truth and be secure enough in it, I thought it could be a very powerful role.”

Although the character is billed as Esther in the script, her name goes unmentioned in the film. She also speaks no lines.

“When I first got the script, she had lines,” Union says. “Because of my own experience,

GABRIELLE UNION THE BIRTH OF A NATION

Nate and I came to the agreement that she shouldn’t have any lines. Black women then did not, and to a certain degree, black women now do not have control over our bodies. At that time, we were voiceless and powerless, and I didn’t want that reality to be squandered with dialogue.” It’s a bold creative gesture for an actor we’ve come to associate with her gift for banter, and a reflection of first-time feature director Parker’s confidence. Critics are hailing it as an immediate Oscar contender.

“This movie is coming about at a great time and not a second too late,” Union says. “A number of conversations have been started and a number of issues have been highlighted across the board, whether that’s in Hollywood, in our country, or in the world, about how the growth of injustice happens day to day, and there’s never been a boisterous stage on which to have the conversation. It wasn’t lost on me as we were sitting in the theater at Sundance and the whole audience was just weeping. Part of what I was weeping for was that there’s a commonality in what we see today. I think the movie will spark a lot of more difficult conversations that we have successfully avoided in this country. The fact that there was a bidding war and it was the biggest sale in the history of the festival was just a cherry on top. The film is accomplishment enough. But it does feel good that our truth is worthwhile. When our truth gets told by us, it has an enormous value beyond what we think and feel and know.”

Clearly, this is one of those rare films that will be viewed a watershed moment in the life of a career actor. “Part of it was just the material. But a lot of it was the experience that Nate created for everyone involved. Now it’s like, I can’t go back to bullshit. I can’t. The experience of filmmaking and creating art has to be different. I can’t go backwards. Even if I’m doing a silly comedy, I want to make sure the experience that everyone has in front of and behind the camera is as magical as what Nate created. Knowing what he was able to do, on a budget, there’s literally no excuse for why the experience of filmmaking is anything less than magical. I can’t have that.” PS

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AS THE EVIL QUEEN RAVENNA, CHARLIZE THERON plays AN ANCIENT, NARCISSIStic SERIAL KILLER— which puts things in perspective. AT 40, THE OSCAR-WINNING ACTRESS, activist, PRODUCER, and single mother feels far MORE POWERFUL THAN when she was seen as just a pretty face. here, she and another hollywood stalwart discuss why beauty is sometimes a thing to overcome photographY Collier Schorr fashion robbie spencer INTERVIEW JAMES FRANCO V MAGAZINE 7 0

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“It became very real, the vanity of it all.. If you are raised to believe that your power is only good for as long as you’re beautiful, then that’s what you’re going to believe.”—CHARLIZE THERON

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I first noticed Charlize Theron when I was a freshman at UCLA and caught 2 Days in the Valley at a theater in Westwood. What I didn’t know then was that the eye-popping, blond Amazonian sex queen in lingerie was Charlize in her screen debut. Later, once I had started acting, I was blown away by her performance in the Al Pacino/Keanu Reeves devil-as-a-lawyer romp, The Devil’s Advocate. In a film where Pacino revelled in chewing the scenery as King Satan, Theron’s perfect Southern bride loses her mind so convincingly that her on-screen suicide is the primary scene that stays with me to this day. She blew the world away with her portrayal of serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster, a full transformation, both physically and mentally. It almost doesn’t seem fair that the most beautiful woman in film can also be one of the best character actors around. And it didn’t stop there—Theron is also funny as hell. She nailed the self-pitying midlife mess of a writer in Young Adult with a pitch-perfect performance that balanced comedic bathos and genuine human sympathy. Basically, I’m in love with Charlize Theron. And I haven’t even mentioned the action star Charlize, the sci-fi star Charlize, and the fantasy villain Charlize. I actually think she can do anything.

JAMES FRANCO How did you go from modeling and dancing to acting?

CHARLIZE THERON I studied, once I moved here [to L.A.]. I didn’t tell any of my friends. I was embarrassed because they all knew me as just this one thing, which was an occasional model. At that time, to be a model turned actor—you just couldn’t come up with a worse combination of a person.

JF It looks like you did a really small part in Children of the Corn III? CT Yeah. My roommate knew the director. She said, “We should go and be extras in this movie.” I was like, “Are you serious? We could do that?” We showed up and ran through a field covered in blood. It was about the most exciting thing I’d ever done in my entire life.

JF And the next thing was 2 Days in the Valley?

CT Yeah. I auditioned for that several times. The director told me, “Actually, you were kind of perfect for the role, but you were really bad at auditioning.” I didn’t understand the process of auditioning. I got a little too crazy for them at one point. I just didn’t know what the limitations were in the room. I tried to make it like acting class, where you would try and make it as real

as possible. You’d bring in props and things like that. I had to do this scene where I, in the movie, show up at this house where I know James Spader’s character is about to do this hit.

I show up because I’ve just been shot. I need him to get me to the hospital. I’m bleeding from my stomach. It’s basically moments before I die. I came into the auditioning room, and when they said, “Okay, are you ready?” I went out the door and in my bag I had brought this bottle of ketchup. I poured the whole bottle of ketchup on my stomach, then told the receptionist outside, “Look, it’s going to get a little loud.” I warned her because I noticed she was on the phone, like that was my job or something. Then I barged through the door, getting ketchup on all the doors and the furniture. I just didn’t know how not to try and make it as real as possible. I think they were a little more concerned about my own sanity. Eventually they gave me the role. [Director John Herzfeld] said, “I knew you’d be up for anything.”

JF That’s a pretty big role for your second movie.

CT Oh yeah, totally, completely. By the way, by saying “second movie,” you’re really giving the role that I had in Children of the Corn VII, or whatever it was, a lot of credit.

JF Did things change after that?

CT Yeah. The marketing campaign was a little scary because they put me front and center in lingerie. I was smart enough to know that was a little, like, Uh oh, there you go, you’re going to be that girl. I did the movie because I felt like it was quirky enough to not make me that girl. The first couple of calls, though, were very much, “We just want her to do what she did in 2 Days in the Valley.” I got it really quickly. The model turned actress. I didn’t work for over a year. I was lucky that I could still go back and do the odd modeling job that no one would know about to pay the rent. Eventually, if I couldn’t do that through modeling, then I would have done it through acting, but as long as I possibly could, I wanted my [acting] career to be about something that I really liked to do. I didn’t want to go in and repeat myself. I knew early on that I wanted longevity in the game. That only happens if you deliver good work.

That’s the only way. That’s just common sense. [That Thing You Do!] was the first movie that I really went out for. I kind of played the ditz again, but it was with Tom Hanks [writing, directing, and acting]. I was like, Okay, I can do this. This is my idol.

JF I remember I met with Sean Penn—years before we did Milk—because he wanted to do

CLOTHING PRADA On Eyes Diorshow Mono Eyeshadow in Mineral On Face Dior Prestige Le Nectar

JACKET GIVENCHY BY RICCARDO TISCI EARRING DIOR FINE JEWELRY

JACKET DIESEL BLACK GOLD TIGHTS AND EARRINGS STYLIST’S OWN

CLOTHING DIOR EARRING DIOR FINE JEWELRY On Eyes Diorshow KhÔl Stick in Smoky Black On Lips Dior Addict Lipstick in Bright

Makeup Kate Lee (Starworks Artists) Hair Enzo Angileri (Cloutier Remix) Manicure April Foreman (The Wall Group) Set design Peter Klein (Frank Reps) Production Wes Olson, Meghan Gallagher, Jane Oh (Connect the Dots) Digital technician Meredith Munn (Apollo Digital) Lighting technician PJ Spaniol Tailor Susie Kourinian Photo assistants Siggy Bodolai and Tyler Ash Stylist assistant Tracy Cyprow Set design assistant Sean Fabi Production assistant Sara Taylor Retouching Two Three Two

another movie. We were at the Four Seasons, in the restaurant, and you came over to the table. I was so shy, I probably said two words.

CT Jesus, that was, what, 17 years ago? I know exactly the movie we were talking about, too. It was a short story called “The Ice at the Bottom of the World.”

JF So, that was the first time I met you. And I’ll just say it, you’re gorgeous. You are very, very beautiful. And that’s something that some actors and actresses have to work out. Like you’re saying, you don’t want to be the sexy girl in lingerie in every movie. On the other hand, you’ve been really smart about how you use your beauty. You want to work with Tom Hanks, it’s okay to play the ditzy girl. You do Celebrity with Woody Allen and you’re playing a model, but it’s okay because the context makes it something else. And then The Devil’s Advocate was the one where you showed that you could do this whole other thing. So now, if you want to be the gorgeous evil queen, you can do that. If you want to be the badass truck driver in the post-apocalyptic future, you can do that, too.

CT George Miller, who I did [Mad Max: Fury Road] with, told me that really, you just want people to be who they are and stop acting. He said once that he was watching a play and, in the middle of it, a cat just walked across the stage. The audience was all looking at the cat, not at the actors. It was this analogy for when a thing’s just doing what it naturally should be doing, that’s when it’s at its most beautiful form. That’s when you can’t take your eyes off of it. So, how do you not get imprisoned by these things? How do you not try and compartmentalize yourself? How do you try not to kill the thing that you are?

How do you find the balance within all of that? I think that’s every actor’s struggle. I think that when you can pay more attention to all that than to building a career and the idea of being a celebrity, that’s when you get the closest to being an artist. The artist that you really are. It’s tough, it’s hard.

JF So, I heard that on The Cider House Rules, you didn’t get along with Tobey [Maguire].

CT Tobey and I had a bit of a rough time, yeah. I mean, we’re good now. It was a difficult movie.

JF But when you’re working with someone who you’re supposed to be in love with on-screen, and offscreen you just do not have that dynamic, how do you deal with that?

CT There really is real power in substitution. The thing is, as an actor, you can’t just rely on one method. Every day is completely different for a completely different reason. Whether it’s the weather, or the writing isn’t there, or you don’t get along with your castmate, you have to be able to go to something else that’s just as powerful. Does it make it as enjoyable?

Probably not. I mean, there were just a couple of days that Tobey and I had a rough time.

The rest of the movie, we actually had a really good time. I love Tobey. I’m kind of glad we had that experience on that movie. It teaches you different things. It taught me that I could fall in love with somebody in my head while looking at someone else.

JF Whose face were you projecting onto his face?

CT That I can’t share with you. I had to. We had some really intimate moments. Tobey and I didn’t feel that way about each other, so I had to figure something else out.

JF In 2000 to 2001, you were just everywhere. What was that period like in your life?

CT I don’t think I was really happy with my life, so I was working a lot. Now, when I look back on it, I was also scared. I felt like I had to run. I didn’t want to lose it. I thought it was all going to go away, or I was going to die, something. When I came out of it, I kind of understood why.

I was in complete denial about things that were going on in my life.

JF So, Monster was a pretty small movie, by a first-time director, but with this powerful performance at the center of it.

CT We shot for 28 days. I got a call from my agent. She said, “I’m five pages into this script that was offered to you and I think it’s unbelievable. You should watch this Nick Broomfield documentary.” I watched it and I just remember thinking, Did my agent give me the right documentary? This can’t be it. It was funny how my whole career had been about, “I can do this, guys, trust me, I can do this.” Then all of a sudden, I was faced with this thing, and I was like, “I don’t think I’m your girl. I don’t think I can do this. I think you’re going to miss the boat on your movie here because you have to go so real with this. This woman is so specific in her mannerisms. There’s no need to tell the story unless you really get into who she was emotionally, and her emotional scars affected how she physically carried herself.” [Director Patty Jenkins] had been writing to Aileen Wuornos at that time and we had planned to go and see her on death row. On the day that it was announced I was making the movie, Aileen was executed. Nobody saw it coming. Aileen had this high school friend that she grew up with in Michigan, Dawn Botkins, who basically got all of her

stuff when she died. Patty and I took a road trip to Flint. Dawn wouldn’t let us copy anything or take anything with us, but we read Aileen’s letters for about a week, and in them, I could see a very scared person. It was in her voice when she was writing that I found her humanity. I’ve played a real-life character when the person’s still alive: Britt Ekland in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers. I had to go to Cannes and sit next to her while she was watching the movie. That was brutal. I could tell there was a part of her that was like, I never did that. I mean, she was really nice about it, but I could tell. I think the same thing about Aileen. I think it was the first time I realized that, as people, our human nature is to not want to believe that we can do things. But when we end up in a situation like death row, we really can look back on our lives. We can reflect in a different way. That’s what I meant by her humanity. I could see how she was going back and forth on herself: who she was, who she thought she was, who she thought other people thought she was, and what she had done.

JF What did she think about the movie being made?

CT You know, I think that she was skeptical. It was true Aileen fashion to be the wall. That was just her. That was innately Aileen, to just go, “No,” pull her chest up and roll her eyes back.

JF You’re really good at comedy, too. Young Adult was great.

CT I got really lucky within Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody. Personal taste in humor is way more complicated and precise than your taste in drama. More people can agree on drama than on comedy. Humor is just so personal.

JF And you’re producing a lot of your own movies now.

CT Yeah. There just needs to be something for me with a director that is like, I really want to go and do this with you. Whatever this journey’s going to be, I’m going to be your guy. I’m going to be there as an empty canvas to tell the story that you really want to tell. Whether I was producing or not producing, I always valued that relationship with the director.

JF In The Huntsman: Winter’s War, you’re reprising your role as the Queen. There’s an interesting dynamic between her and a younger woman.

CT Fairy tales are really fucking dark. I read them every night to my kids. That character, the Evil Queen, to me started off very like, Yuck. It’s too iconic. It’s just so one-note.

Everybody knows who this person is. Then, the more I read the story, the more I realized she was a fucking serial killer. She had this God complex. The more I humanized her, the more she became broken to me, the more I realized how painful it must be to be alive for that long and just know one way of living, to never learn another way of living. It became brutal. I was lucky in the first one, the producer and the director were really open to me creating more of a backstory for her and adding some scenes to really showcase her in a little bit of a different light, so that she’s not just the bitch on wheels. In a really weird way, I was allowed to create that character more than any other character that I’ve ever played. The idea of exploring her through a different relationship, a new relationship— Emily Blunt’s character, her younger sister—felt interesting. It’s brutal when you think of the truth of what we face in society, what it means for a woman versus what it means for a man. What we, especially women, consider to be our strengths and to be our weaknesses. That aging is a weakness, that we think of it that way. Yet, it’s when we’re at our wisest. We’ve experienced everything and we should be considering ourselves the richest.

We live in a society where women are treated like wilted flowers. They used to be pretty, but now they’re just kind of wilting. The guy is like a fine bottle of wine. He just gets better and better with age. It became very real, the vanity of it all. That we are all animals of our circumstance. If you are raised to believe that your power is only good for as long as you’re beautiful, then that’s what you’re going to believe. If you’re a child growing up in a fucking racist community, then you’re going to grow up thinking black people are bad.

Hopefully, you’ll find a different path somewhere along your life. If your circumstances are so enclosed in the environment that you were taught in, then that’s what you’re going to be. That’s what this character is.

JF It’s like the Snow White story is parallel to what it’s like to be a woman in the film industry.

CT But we compartmentalize women too much. We talk about women in Hollywood as if it’s different for women who are bankers in the Midwest. It really isn’t. I have friends who are not in this industry­—women, beautiful women. I see the pressures that they face. I see how they feel when they get older. It’s everywhere. If we want to believe that when we make movies, we’re holding up the image of society, then we have to agree that this is something that’s way bigger than just women in Hollywood.

Jacket Burberry

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taylor wears SWIMSUIT Victoria’s Secret V MAGAZINE 8 2

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MODEL OF THE MOMENT TAYOR HILL AND THE LOBSTER DIRECTOR YORGOS LANTHIMOS FIT RIGHT IN AT AN ENGLISH COUNTRY HOME, WHICH IS THE PERFECT PLACE TO MAKE A SPLASHY SUMMER DEBUT IN THIS SEASON’S hottest swimwear photography Yorgos Lanthimos FASHION AGATA BELCEN

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TAYLOR WEARS SWIMSUIT VICTORIA’S SECRET jean WEARs (THROUGHOUT) CLOTHING VINTAGE FROM BEYOND RETRO, CARLO MANZI, JOHN SMEDLEY SHOES, GLASSES, JEWELRY HER OWN

TAYLOR WEARS SWIMSUIT POLO RALPH LAUREN

TAYLOR WEARS SWIMSUIT LISA MARIE FERNANDEZ

taylor wears SWIMSUIT DSQUARED2 MARY WEARs (THROUGHOUT) TOPS VINTAGE FROM ANGELS THE COSTUMIERS, BEYOND RETRO, CONTEMPORARY WARDROBE PANTS, SHOES, NECKLACE her OWN

taylor wears SWIMSUIT POLO RALPH LAUREN

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taylor wears SWIMSUIT ERES

Makeup Nami Yoshida (D+V Management) Hair Christian Eberhard (Julian Watson Agency) Model Taylor Hill (IMG) Extras Jamie Goodkind (Scallywags), Joe Lee (Ugly Agency), Jean Brooks (Models Plus), Mary Robinson (Flair Talent) Set design Georgina Pragnell (Webber Represents) Production M+M Management Photo assistant Ciarรกn Maginn Stylist assistant Chloe Grace Press Makeup assistant Tamayo Yamamoto Hair assistant Noriko Takayama

TAYLOR WEARS SWIMSUIT COVER

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KARL LAGERFELD AND AMANDA HARLECH DRAW INSPIRATION FROM CLASSICAL CHINESE WATERCOLORS, CONJURing A Languid MASTERWORK with MUSE KENDALL JENNER WHILE ANDREW BOLTON AND DEREK BLASBERG REFLECT UPON THE ARTISTRY OF COUTURE’S HISTORY photography KARL LAGERFELD fashion Amanda Harlech V MAGAZINE 94

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CHANEL HAUTE Couture

Oval-sleeved tunic embroidered with floral garlands worn over tulle pencil skirt embroidered with flowers

shoes (throughout) Chanel

VALENTINO HAUTE Couture

Embroidered double silk kimono, worn over embroided crepon dress

necklace Valentino brooches (on collar) DELFINA DELETTREZ

GIORGIO ARMANI PRIVÉ

Sleeveless top embroidered with Swarovski crystals, worn with wavy plissé organza skirt

Fabric stylist’s own

DIOR HAUTE Couture

Embroidered silk crepe and silk chiffon dress

brooch (in hair) Shaun Leane

MAISON MARGIELA ARTISaNAL DESIGNED BY JOHN GALLIANO Embroidered tabbard dress with patent belt

brooch (in hair) Shaun Leane

GIVENCHY HAUTE COUTURE BY RICCARDO TISCI

Silk chiffon cape embroidered with Strass crystals and crocodile detail, worn over embroidered star motif lace gown

brooches (on gown) Chanel

ATELIER VERSACE

Column evening dress featuring silk tulle bustier constructed with bands of micro-pleated georgette and sequin-embellished harness

brooch (in hair) Shaun Leane

GIAMBATTISTA VALLI HAUTE COUTURE Silk caped dress with embroidered neckline

brooches (on sleeve) Chanel

ALEXANDER McQUeEN F/W ’16

Floral-embroidered quilted satin kimono lined with marabou feathers, worn over floral-embroidered antique tulle gown

brooch (in hair) Shaun Leane

Makeup Tom Pecheux (Calliste Agency) Hair Sam McKnight (Premier Hair and Make-up) Model Kendall Jenner (The Society) Image Direction Eric Pfrunder and Katherine Marre Manicure Marian Newman (Streeters London) Set design Andy Tomlinson (Streeters London) Photography Contacts Océane SelliEr and Alexandra Hylén Photo assistants Olivier Saillant, Bernald Sollich, Frédéric David, Xavier Arias Stylist assistants Chris SuTton and Pierre-Alexandre Fillaire Makeup assistants Ania Grzesczuk and Florence Depestele Set design assistantS James Robotham and Sam Overs retouching ludovic d’harDivillé Catering Elsa & Justin

“Couture is still the pinnacle of the fashion hierarchy.” So declares Andrew Bolton, the curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute in New York. His newest exhibition, “Manus x Machina,” takes an interesting vantage point on haute couture by questioning how technology has changed the way high fashion gets made. As the world gets smaller and smaller—and as fashion gets faster and faster—Bolton stops to think about what some of the most intricate fashion processes in the world mean today. Editor’s note: just after discussing a fusion of couture and prêt-à-porter, Hedi Slimane showed an entirely haute couture Saint Laurent collection during Paris ready-to-wear week. Coincidence?

DEREK BLASBERG I’ll start with the question everyone asks: is the haute couture relevant in modern times?

ANDREW BOLTON Absolutely. The couture is more relevant than it’s ever been because now it’s the integration of the handmade and technology. People want things that are original and different more than at any other time—articles of clothing that have a distinct fingerprint of the designer. And particularly in the face of fast fashion, it seems especially special.

DB Is it a dying art?

AB I’ll answer that with a question of my own: have you been to the Valentino atelier in Rome?

They actually have a school of couture, where young kids come and learn about couture.

They have that personal connection with it—the dialogue, the day-to-day access. It’s not a new art form, but what they’re doing is modern. It’s like what Karl Lagerfeld does in his leatherwork and embroidery: he makes it look entirely contemporary.

DB I saw you at the couture shows. Did anything strike you this season?

AB What I think is most interesting is how the gap between the couture and the readyto-wear is diminishing. It really struck me when I saw Valentino. The craftsmanship of the ready-to-wear is almost at the level of couture. So the main distinction left in the world of couture is the fit, the idea that it’s fitted for one person and the owner is the single model.

DB What about the role of the designer at these couture houses?

AB There’s something so magical about what Karl does. Last season it was the 3-D printing, this season it was about using wood, and going back to the environment, and the use of natural materials. For clothes to be extraordinary – and that’s what couture is all about—it has to be a mixture of technicality, originality, and a strong concept. It starts with a strong vision, and it has to filter down from there.

DB So, do you think that some of the ready-to-wear designers could one day do couture?

AB Sarah Burton [at Alexander McQueen] is extraordinary. Gareth Pugh is extraordinary. Last season, Proenza Schouler had a dress that had 3,000 hand-embroidered paillette sequins that retailed for $40,000. This is something that I think could be interesting: the emergence of the demi-couture, which is what Pierre Cardin called it. I also wonder if one day the couture designers will start showing the two collections together.

DB And then it would be the end of couture fashion week in Paris, presumably.

AB Which would be a loss, of course. There’s absolutely a magic to the haute couture, even in something as basic as embellishment. Prêt-à-porter collections are often embroidered in India, but here in Paris you can see the handicraft yourself, and to have that personal connection to embroidery is something special. It’s extraordinary to watch as the garments create a personality. You see them come alive—there is a soul and a heart there. The seamstress is still so key to the haute couture: the personal connection, the intimacy, and the lightness, which you can only find at this level.

DB “Manus x Machina,” on the other hand, looks at fashion in the age of technology.

AB We are looking at the establishment of the haute couture in the 19th century and the distinction between hand and machine at the onset of mass production.

DB When most people hear about tech and fashion, they think of futuristic costumes and space suits. But that’s not what this show is about, is it?

AB Well, it’s not about using tech for the sake of tech. We are looking at those designers— Karl, Sarah, Miuccia Prada, and so on—who have employed tech in tandem with traditional design. The hand is never absent from the machine, and vice versa. It’s very rare to have a piece that’s exclusively one or the other, so this is really about the duality of both.

DB So it’s not an exhibition on RoboCop? AB No! I’ll give you another example from Proenza Schouler: we have a piece on which they used ultrasonic welding—laminating fabrics together by sound—which you’d only know when you get up close. The show is about the celebration of process and about asking people to slow down and appreciate the craftsmanship that goes into fashion.

DB As opposed to fast fashion.

AB To me, the most dystopian vision of the future is fast fashion. It destroys creativity. The idea of having fashion 24/7 is the death of fashion. I find the idea that that type of consumerism will win out over creativity to be simply depressing. It’s destructive to the designer because it doesn’t allow him or her to be creative or have a moment of reflection.

DB True fashion takes time.

AB And that’s what the couture is about. That’s some of the relevance Raf [Simons] brought to Dior when he was there. Last year, I was at Lincoln Center [in New York] and someone walked by in a Dior couture coat Raf had designed and I remarked on how well it fit. It wasn’t weird; it wasn’t peculiar. It was like what it would have been to see someone walk down the street wearing Balenciaga in the 1950s or ’60s. It was couture and it was part of a real woman’s wardrobe. I loved that.

SEAN BAKER’S

FROM LEFT: clu WEARS ROBE DRIES VAN NOTEN HAT AND SUNGLASSES (THROUGHOUT) HIS OWN lauren WEARS DRESS STELLA McCARTNEY TOP AND JEANS (UNDERNEATH) GIVENCHY BY RICCARDO TISCI bracelets and earrings chanel ring (throughout) her own V MAGAZINE 1 0 6

tangerine director sean baker’s iphone has framed yet another downtown drama, wherein heiress AND ACTRESS lauren ALICE avery TAKES western star clu gulager OUT TO LUNCH IN PRE-FALL’S SWEETEST PIECES photography SEAN BAKER fashion Haley Wollens

clu wears jacket maison margiela lauren WEARS SHIRT valentino jewelry CHANEL HAT STYLIST’S OWN sunglasses CLU’s own

clu WEARS (THROUGHOUT) SHIRT DRIES VAN NOTEN PANTS ADIDAS lauren WEARS CAPE GIORGIO ARMANI TIGHTS FALKE HAT STYLIST’S OWN

lauren WEARS CAPE GIORGIO ARMANI TIGHTS FALKE HAT STYLIST’S OWN bracelets CHANEL FANNY PACK SONIA RYKIEL

lauren WEARS SHIRT LOUIS VUITTON MENS s/s ’16 choker LANVIN

clu WEARS JACKET maison margiela lauren WEARS CLOTHING KENZO HAT GUCCI

lauren WEARS COAT MAISON MARGIELA MENS s/s ’16 SUNGLASSES STYLIST’S OWN choker LANVIN

lauren WEARS JACKET AND SWEATER ROCHAS TURTLENECK AND SHOES BOSS SKIRT AND haT HER OWN TIGHTS FALKE clu WEARS JACKET maison margiela

lauren WEARS CLOTHING, shoes, choker CHANEL clu wears robe dries van noten

clu wears jacket maison margiela shirt his own lauren WEARS SHIRT GUCCI VEIL STYLIST’S OWN

Makeup Kirin Bhatty (Starworks Artists) Hair Ryan Richman (Starworks Artists) Production Samantha Quan Hair assistant Brooke CheevER Retouching Alex Coco

FROM LEFT: ELISE WEARS DRESS GUCCI KATE WEARS DRESS and rings GUCCI sunglasses and necklace vintage from the way we wore

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OUR ANNUAL FORD MODEL SEARCH IS BACK WITH TWO NEW CONTRACTS! SEE THE ALL-AMERICAN WINNERS ELISE AGEE AND KATE OLTHOFF IN GUCCI PRE-FALL AS THEY EMBARK ON brand-NEW CAREERS in palo alto DIRECTOR GIA COPPOLA’S ROBERT ALTMAN HOMAGE photography Gia Coppola fashion Arianne Phillips V MAGAZINE 119

ELISE WEARS DRESS, SHOES, RINGS GUCCI TIGHTS FOGAL NEckLAcE vINTAGE fROm the wAy we wOre ZOE WEARS cLOTHING AND SHOES GUCCI TIGHTS FOGAL kATE WEARS DRESS GUCCI EARRINGS vINTAGE fROm the wAy we wOre

elise wears Dress GUCCI

GIA COPPOLA ON ALTMAN, ARIANNE, AND ALESSANDRO Robert Altman’s 1977 film 3 Women was born in the director’s subconscious, based entirely on a dream he had about a mysteriously weird (or weirdly mysterious) relationship between Shelley Duvall and her roommate Sissy Spacek in a stark, sun- and sand-drenched Southern California town. The actresses play Pinky and Millie, coworkers at a health spa full of elderly clients. Their relationship becomes further complicated with the entrance of Willie (Janice Rule), whose husband, Edgar (Robert Fortier), becomes embroiled in a love triangle – or here, rather, a love square – with all three women.

It’s an eerie, odd film. But visually speaking, the empty yet saturated cinematic expanses are exactly the sort of fashion reference the photographer and film director Gia Coppola was looking for when she shot the winners of our annual Ford Model Search. “I was drawn to its subtlety,” Coppola says, adding that she had watched 3 Women as a young girl, but didn’t entirely understand the visual complexities until she watched it again recently. “I love the attention to detail and the slow build of the characters’ psychoses.”

Specifically, Coppola says that she and the shoot’s fashion director, Arianne Phillips, looked to the film’s hair, color scheme, and “the sparseness of the location.” They both felt it was the perfect venue to showcase Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele’s third critically acclaimed womenswear collection. “It’s incredible what he’s done.

He inspires me,” Coppola says. “It’s truly art. He’s like Christian Dior in the 1950s: he’s changing how people dress and look at clothes.

“On location,” Coppola continues, “we found some similarities between the film and the fashion. Altman’s storytelling wasn’t linear and existed in a grey area between the real and unreal. The same can be said of Michele’s Gucci shows, which blur the lines between male and female, contemporary and vintage. Both of these creatures hark into our memories to make us realize how we feel in the moment.” DEREK BLASBERG

TO SEE A VIDEO FROM THIS SHOOT, GO TO VMAGAZINE.COM

Makeup Lottie (StreeterS) Hair teddy CHarLeS (tHe WaLL Group) ModeLS eLiSe aGee, kate oLtHoff, Zoe ManiSCaLCo (ford) Manicure Tracy cleMens using Dior Vernis (opus BeauTy) sTylisT assisTanTs Michelle Moon anD gaBi gilMan Makeup assisTanT aliana Moss hair assisTanTs DakoTa hunTer anD nancilee sanTos proDucTion izzy heller proDucTion Design naTalie ziering locaTion pink MoTel, los angeles

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