Bedhead sent me this Variety interview with Michael Fassbender yesterday and I found it so depressing that I was all “Eh, I’ll wait until we have some photos of him in Cannes.” It’s not depressing because of Fassy – it’s depressing because the Variety interviewer, Ramin Setoodeh, is such a well-known hack. Setoodeh used to work for Time Magazine and I hated him then too – his “shtick” is not doing any research and being pretty rude and unprofessional to the people he interviews. You can read the full piece here. Some highlights (in context of Setoodeh’s terrible questions):
RS: You recently finished playing Steve Jobs. Is it dark?
MF: Like “The Conjuring”?No, is it a favorable adaptation?
I think it is.You look skinnier now.
I didn’t lose weight. But I certainly didn’t go to the gym.Did it cause you to look at Mac products differently?
It did. I’m still on my iPhone 4.You don’t have the iPhone 6?
No, the 4 is my favorite design. I also use something until it’s no longer useable.Your phone looks broken.
But it still works. The cover actually broke off my broken phone.Where are you living now?
I’m still in London, but I haven’t spent too much time there in the last year. I did think about L.A. before, but not so much now. I think I’m European. I know I’m European. I’m happiest there.Do you still have to put yourself on tape?
Luckily, not for a while. I think the last audition I did was for “Inside Llewyn Davis,” the Coen brothers film.Are you in that movie?
No, I’m not. Thanks for pointing that out. It was an unsuccessful audition. I went up for Oscar [Isaac’s] part.
I think that was the point where most people are like, “Really? You’re going to ask Michael Fassbender if he’s in Inside Llewyn Davis?” What else? Let’s see… Fassy says he would “shoot a hundred” X-Men films if they wanted him but that his contract was for three films and he’s “curious” as to what will happen next. He also says he hasn’t seen Macbeth yet and that he didn’t really learn how to perform in iambic pentameter, saying: “I’m a little dyslexic with the iambic pentameter. I just always tried to make sense of it, and hoped the rhythm would follow.”
Speaking of… they just revealed this first clip from Macbeth as a Cannes teaser. Hopefully we’ll get a real trailer in the next week. The shouting… hm…
Photos courtesy of PR Photos, ‘Macbeth’ production still.
The interviewer is terrible, but I have to give credit to Fassy; he isn’t humorless about the situation. Lol at mentioning “The Conjuring.”
I love ‘Macbeth’ and I love Fassbender, but I have a feeling I’m not going to love this ‘Macbeth’.
Someone used the word ‘overwrought’ to describe the stills, and that’s exactly the impression I’m getting here. It just looks…. too much. And I have serious doubts about Cottiliard as Lady Macbeth – better than Portman for sure, but that’s setting the bar pretty low. I don’t think she’s a very good actress in English, and her French accent is going to be distracting.
All that said, ‘Macbeth’ is a very hard play to put on film. By far my favourite version is ”Throne of Blood” by Akira Kurosawa, which sets the story of Macbeth in the Japanese feudal era. Sounds like it wouldn’t work, but it does. Magnificently.
Love Throne of Blood which is fantastic. Totally worth checking out. This on the other hand: between Cotillard’s accent and Fassbender’s approach (in a nutshell: I’ll shout my way through the verse)… this isn’t looking promising.
From a couple seconds, it’s hard to tell whether he’ll shout his way through the whole performance. But I agree that would be a dreadful approach.
Fassbender is showing patience with idiots that others should learn. He also has a great sense of humor about it. He has never been what I call, buff, always lean bordering on under weight, so why someone thought he was thinner is odd. He would look ill if he lost weight. The interviewer was an idiot, but being the professional he is, Fassbender just rolled with it. He is looking good (physically and in print) in this run up to Cannes. Love him casual, but really love him dressed up.
That movie looks really generic and uninspiring. I think I’ll just re-watch James MacAvoy in Shakespeare ReTold.
OMG, that’s my favorite version too!!
Mine too, right after the one that had McAvoy on stage. *seizes-the-opportunity-to-brag* Seriously though, I think Macbeth works best on film when the story is put in a modern context. This movie looked bad ever since the first Bts pics appeared.
Jesus, who put that preview together? It’s horrible.
Thankfully it’s not a real trailer. It’s cut from a Cannes reel which shows clips from a bunch of movies.
Pretty tactless and foul when the so-called reporter brought up the movie in which Fassbender didn’t get the part. My boo.
Macbeth isn’t my favorite Shakespeare play but I’ll see it out of curiosity of Cottiliard and Fassbender interactions. I wonder if they are old enough for the parts?
back to lurking
I think he is old enough but Marion might even be too old to play her. It’s not stated in the play so it’s up for speculations, but my former teacher, who is obsessed with Shakespeare, claimed that based on the customs from that era and the information given, Lady Macbeth was more likely to be in her early to mid-twenties or even late teens than middle aged, as she’s often portrayed. Women were marrying very, very young then, were usually much younger than their husbands, especially the wealthy ones, and people lived much shorter than now. Woman in the early twenties was already considered mature. Woman beyond the age of 30 would be considered old and it would be almost impossible for her to manipulate a man like LM did, as he would not consider he attractive, hence worthy of listening too or caring what she thinks. Some men seem to still live in that era.
Yes, there are few clues about the age of the main characters in ‘Macbeth’. Macbeth and his lady are usually played by middle-aged actors these days, but it’s possible Shakespeare intended them to be much younger. The ”I have lived long enough” speech in Act V seems to suggest that Macbeth is an old man, but we don’t know how much time – months? years? decades? – has elapsed during the course of the play. We do know that Lady Macbeth had given birth, but we also know that she and Macbeth have no children together. Was she married before? Or did she and Macbeth have children who had died? Either way, it might suggest that Lady Macbeth is not that young. We just don’t know.
But in any case, I don’t think age is crucial to the characters in the way it is in ‘Hamlet’, for example. I have a bit of a ‘thing’ about how actors playing Hamlet are often much too old for the role, but that’s another story!
If he acts Macbeth without the iambic pentameter I will be happy, according to Ian Mckellan a good Shakespearean actor is one who acts in this way, the worst are those that act it without. However, for me ears I prefer it without. I find the poetry-flow, so to speak, a bit boring. But, read it without and with passion I like it.
That’s a real reporter?! What an idiot? It’s not like Variety is a rag either…or at least it wasn’t?
Kudos to Fassy, he’s really starting to impress me on the PR front. The rest was already impressive. 😉
I’ve been really eager to see this movie from the earliest stills, and this clip looks great. I love Shakespeare, and I loved Throne of Blood, which was itself highly stylized and over the top, as this looks to be.
Yippee, totally looking for a second half of 2015 chock-ful of Fassy movies and news! Btw, looove the Macbeth teaser..
I agree about the iphone 4, mine still works fine. When it becomes unusable, then I might upgrade to iphone 6 or switch to Samsung.
The interviewer sucked but Fassy is hilarious. My favorite exchange was this….
Have you seen “Macbeth”?
I have not.
Why won’t they show it to you?
Because they are mean.
Classic Fassy. He surmised the dude was an idiot and just went with it.
I love his replies!! Ahahah!! But seriously,a Variety journalist who doesn’t know he was not in a Coen’s film.. Seriously??!!
I like what I’ve seen about Macbeth. Fassbender e Cotillard look great and the cinematography looks beautiful. Looking forward to it.
That’s what kills me about some of these interviewers. If I knew I had to interview this person, this person, this person, the next day–I would do my research on them. Take a few hours, TOPS, depending on how in depth I was going to go…….