Actors on Jonah Hex

http://splashpage.mtv.com/2010/03/04/michael-shannon-on-his-jonah-hex-role-and-potential-sequels/

Michael Shannon On His 'Jonah Hex' Role And Potential Sequels

Posted 3/4/10 11:46 am ET by Rick Marshall in DC Comics, News, Video

Actor Michael Shannon will be seen on screen with "Twilight" star Kristen Stewart in "The Runaways" later this month, but just he'll also be appearing alongside Josh Brolin in June as a character in "Jonah Hex," the live-action film based on DC's western hero.

MTV News managed to get some info on Shannon's "Hex" role during a press event for the "Runaways" biopic.

"I play a fellow named Doc Cross Williams," said Shannon. "In the comic book, or graphic novel, he's kind of one of those old vaudevillian... He has a traveling show where he has cock fights and dog fights and strange creatures, and he's a snake-oil kind of guy."

"He's got this tonic, this elixir that he sells that'll solve all your problems," he explained. "And Jonah Hex comes to my little circus and he causes a ruckus."

While Shannon classified his role as "a cameo," he did say there was room for a return to the "Hex" universe.

"I think the character may come back if there's another iteration of 'Jonah Hex,' but for now it's just this couple of little scenes," he said, adding that it certainly felt as if the film was being made with sequels in mind. "Yeah, I think that's what they're shooting for."

Looking forward to "Jonah Hex"? Let us know in the comment section or on Twitter!

http://movies.rightcelebrity.com/natacha-itzel-jonah-hex-actress/1706

Wednesday, April 28th, 2010 at 6:25 pm
Natacha Itzel: Jonah Hex Actress
By Sarah Luoma

Meet Natacha Itzel, Jonah Hex actress. Itzel will appear as Jonah Hex’s wife in the action drama due out this June. Get details here with video after the jump.

Actress Natacha Itzel joins the likes of Hollywood actors Megan Fox, Josh Brolin and John Malkovich in the Jimmy Hayward production.

Jonah Hex, scheduled to hit theaters on June 18th of this year, follows the United States Military, who “makes a scarred bounty hunter with warrants on his own head an offer he cant refuse: in exchange for his freedom, who must stop a terrorist t who is ready to unleash Hell on Earth.”

Written by Mark Neveldine and Brad Taylor, Jonah Hex was directed by Jimmy Hayward and also features the likes of actors Michael Fassbender, Will Arnett, Julia Jones and Michael Shannon.

Check out the Jonah Hex trailer below and get more on Natacha as well.


As a biography Natacha Itzel was born on December 2nd in the year 1984, she is twenty six years old. Itzel is a native of North Carolina from Fayetteville. Standing at 5’2”, Natacha has appeared in her fair share of TV series, movies and commercials.

Also a theater performer with plenty of experience collected over the years, Itzel has appeared in such productions as The Shape of Things, Reason To Be Pretty, Careless Love, Jake’s Women, Love Me Warm, Wheelies, Valentine’s Day and Another Antigone.

When it comes to both the small screen and the big screen you my have seen the Jonah Hex actress in 100 Tears, Remembrance and Pregnancy Pact, based on the true story of a group of teenage girls in high school who all decide to get pregnant together and raise their children.

She has also appeared in Preaching to the Pastor as the character Maria Sanchez, Exit 727, Journey to Promethea. Currently Itzel is working on the upcoming drama entitled American Empire alongside Supernatural’s Genevieve Cortese.

http://www.collider.com/2010/05/13/john-malkovich-interview-jonah-hex-on-set-read-or-listen-here/

John Malkovich On Set Interview JONAH HEX – Read or Listen Here
by Steve 'Frosty' Weintraub Posted:May 13th, 2010 at 10:00 am

When I was invited to visit the set of Jonah Hex last year, I’ll admit the first thing that excited me was the chance to talk to John Malkovich. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a huge fan of his work, so getting the chance to ask him a few questions about playing Turnbull (the villain of Jonan Hex) was a real thrill. And while you might think because of the intense characters Malkovich plays on screen that his personality might be in some way similar, I can report he’s as calm and relaxed as anyone I’ve ever met. But the same couldn’t be said for all the visiting journalists, as I could tell we were all a bit nervous asking him questions.

Thankfully, whatever he was game to talk about anything, and during our on set interview he told us why he wanted to get involved, how he created his character, the makeup process, was he a fan of the genre, his rehearsal process, and so much more. If you’re a fan of this great actor, you’ll love getting the chance to either read or listen to what he had to say:

Before you read the interview, if you missed the trailer for Jonah Hex, I’d watch it first.

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As always, you can either read the transcript below or listen to the audio of the on set interview. Here’s part one and here’s part two. Jonah Hex hits theaters June 18.

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Question: Was part of your decision to do this Josh telling you he’s doing it and saying it would be fun to do together?

John Malkovich: Absolutely, yes.

What was it about his enthusiasm that brought you in?

JM: Well, we’re friends, but he sent me the script and I read it and met, at that time it was going to be Neveldine/Taylorand I met with them when I was out in California and it seemed a thing to do that I thought might make an interesting film and might have some success. Then they dropped off or whatever happened, I’m really not privy to that. And he told me he met Jimmy and he really liked him and his take on it. Then I met Jimmy out in California on another trip and said, “Yeah, great.”

Jonah-Hex-movie-image-John-Malkovich

Did you have input into the look of your character at all?

JM: No, not so much. I think it’s pretty much based on the comic. I think it’s pretty much along those lines. But I didn’t really ask for input either.

Did they send you the comics when you were deciding?

JM: Yeah, I had seen it a few times before. Jimmy had done some mock-ups of them that he showed me in Los Angeles.

The film seems to have a specific blend of the real and unreal. Can you talk about the decisions you had to make as far as how larger than life you wanted it to be?

JM: I’m not sure that’s really a decision for me. I think that’s really Jimmy’s decision and my theory about that is that I’m a professional actor and if he wants it big or cartoony or not, it’s really Jimmy’s decision. I wouldn’t feel even super-comfortable engaging in that conversation really.

Could you say what he decided?

JM: I think it’s maybe less cartoonish in a certain way than perhaps what was written, but it still has some incise to it. I’ll put it that way.

When you’re creating a character like this, are all your cues in the script or is it an intense collaborative process with Jimmy?

JM: That really depends on who the director is and what you sense or feel is or is not required from you really. And with Jimmy, Jimmy’s not a control freak which obviously some of them are in a rather concerning way. I think Jimmy’s quite collaborative, so on this I certainly feel more than welcome to offer a suggestion or ask a question. And yes, I probably prefer working that way but I don’t have to.

Jonah-Hex-movie-image-John-Malkovich

A lot of people won’t be familiar with your character. Can you talk about the character you play?

JM: Turnbull was a Southern plantation owner and very wealthy and very powerful. He feels Jonah has caused his son to be killed in the way, so there’s a big sort of revenge factor there. Turnbull also leads a group of kind of marauders, former confederate soldiers. Eventually he hopes to overthrow the government.

How long do you spend each day in makeup?

JM: I don’t, Christian does. He’s the makeup artist, I just sit there. It’s probably an hour and a half or so, it’s a while.

You’re filming in anamorphic widescreen. Can you talk about your love of widescreen?

JM: I like anamorphic. I’ve done a few films like that. It makes for some differences because mostly I know frames by the lens and it kind of cuts that in half, so that’s a kind of oddity too. And I never watch video, so I’ll only see it when it’s done probably. I’m sure it looks good. I’ve worked with Mitch twice before, so I know him well as a cinematographer. I’m sure it will be good. Jimmy is quite visual, so…

Have you found Jimmy very open to everyone’s input?

JM: He’s pretty open I’d say. I think he responds to things. He seems quite instinctive, so he responds to the way something makes him feel in the frame and that’s good. And if he wants more, he asks for more. If he wants less, he asks for less.

Can you talk about your character in terms of the supernatural aspects?

JM: Well, my character’s not so much involved with that. Maybe a tiny bit. At a point in the story, Hex has kind of aberrations and I appear very briefly as one of those and we sort of work that out together. It wasn’t really quite what’s in the script.

Were you a fan of the genre?

JM: Well, we’ve done, in production, we’ve done two comic novels. Ghost World and Art School, so I’m not really an aficionado, I know a bit about it. I liked comics when I was a kid and read them and everything, but for me work is work. Everything allows for possibilities and failures.

And the western genre?

JM: I never really did a western western. I was going to do one with Tommy Lee Jones, who’d written a very beautiful script of Cormac McCarthy’s book, but then I think somebody else is doing it, which I liked enormously, but I never really did one. Of Mice and Men was sort of the closest. I’ve always liked to watch them.

As the villain, is your performance more restrained or animated?

JM: Well, I don’t know, I spent the entire last two nights yelling, so I don’t know how restrained that is.

Having done both stage and screen, do you bring your stage skill set more so for this kind of role?

JM: Yeah, you could. I mean, it’s probably, I mean to make a very blanket statement, it’s maybe more energized in a certain way than what one might do in some films. But, I think probably the skill set that is most important is comic books have certain archetypal notions and the skill set I would have though came in so handy was having worked so much on the scripts that you can say, well we can’t really do that because it doesn’t fit into this mold. But we can do it like this or we can do it like that and that would be absolutely fine. And so we’ve worked a lot of the text, especially the text my character has. I don’t really think of characters that way because they all have their own sort of life stories and experiences for being the way they are – good, bad or indifferent. So I wouldn’t really compare them.

Jonah-Hex-movie-image-Megan-Fox-Josh-Brolin

Was there a particular moment that you were looking forward to? Do you look forward to scenes or is it just one day at a time?

JM: Not really, one day at a time.

I am curious about your rehearsal process and how important that is for your performance?

JM: Well, it depends. I mean, a lot of time rehearsals are taken up with other things other than preparing a character. I mean, in other words, if you do rehearsals for the most part on stage, then that’s actually pairing a character, but normally for films you don’t rehearse very much and if you do you don’t rehearse for very long. And at least in my experience, a lot of time in films, what you’re really doing is giving the script a final look over. Not so much, you know, oh is my character pigeon-toed. You don’t really have time for that.

You worked on Beowulf, which is a radically different process. Can you talk to working on that bleeding edge of technology and what you as an actor bring to that?

JM: Well, I don’t know if I bring anything, but I loved doing that. It was really fun. It was exactly like doing a play rehearsal. I mean, you don’t stop for anything, there are no set-ups, there’s no costumes, there’s no costumes or continuity. Even camera direction doesn’t really matter very much, so all the knowledge or experience that one might have gleaned in a number of years of doing it don’t really apply very much. I think it’s perfect for theater actors, that process. We all loved it. Tony Hopkins, Brendan Gleeson, a lot of the actors in that came from theater. I don’t know about Robin. She probably did some, but a lot of the people that played the traveling group as it were, I think the vast majority were theater actors. So, for us, it’s perfect. It’s really just another rehearsal.

Jonah-Hex-movie-image-Will-Arnett

Would you do it again?

JM: Absolutely, in a second. And I liked Robert very much.

The scene we just saw you perform seemed to have a Shakespearean quality to it. Is that indicative of your character on the whole?

JM: Well, I think one of the things we were looking at when we were looking finally at the script was to try and, you know, if the action can be constituted so Josh’s character can remain quite laconic and non-verbal and iconic in a way and archetypical, than obviously that’s preferable, which sometimes means that the other people have to do the blah, blah, blah and the exposition, which is also fun. So, with this, we just felt that it could kind of maybe go deeper than what was there originally. Why a bunch of grown men would sort of decide to overthrow the government. Somebody was saying, I don’t know if this is true I didn’t verify it, but somebody was saying the other day that in Vixburg they first celebrated the fourth of July in 1976, which is holding a bit of a grudge I would say. So we wanted to try and communicate what these men feel, but in a fairly succinct… This is by far the longest sort of ramble in the thing, but before that part really just sort of, in a way, said who they were, but we already know that.

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=26235

Hexed: John Gallagher, Jr. & Will Arnett

Posted: 2 hours ago

From the recent critical comeback kid Josh Brolin in the starring role to Academy Award nominee John Malkovich as the vile villain, the cast of Warner Brothers June 18 film adaptation of DC Comics' "Jonah Hex" is built upon unique casting choices. However, when CBR News visited the set of the film last year, the full extent of the producer's wide casting net became clear when we did back-to-back interviews with John Gallagher, Jr. and Will Arnett who play Lt. Grass and Second Lt. Evan of the Union army respectively.

Gallagher may not be a well-known name to film goers, but on the stage he's one of the biggest actors on Broadway. Already starring in the Tony-winning "Spring Awakening" during its initial run on the Great White Way, the actor is currently headlining "American Idiot" – the jukebox musical based on the songs of Green Day. Arnett is best known to comedy fans for playing Gob Bluth on the Emmy-winning "Arrested Development" as well as starring in a number of movies like "Blades of Glory." However, both actors are breaking new personal ground in "Hex" as their roles in the Western feature neither singing nor joke-making, and each actor explained how they came to wear the Union blue, their memories of Jonah Hex from "Batman: The Animated Series" and how they think "Hex" will remain separate from other comic book films.

JOHN GALLAGHER, JR.

Can you tell us about your character and how you fit into "Jonah Hex"?

John Gallagher, Jr.: I play Second Lieutenant Evan in 'Jonah Hex' – it's a picture. I'm the second-in-command to Will Arnett's character Lieutenant Grass, so most of my involvement is with him. But I do have some precious little moments with Mr. Josh Brolin as Jonah Hex. My character hero worships him a little bit and thinks that he –for all of his lack of morality – is still a righteous person. And he's a little enamored of...obsessed with him, despite the fact that my character's part of kind of the machine of the film – the union army being the kind of buttoned-up opposite of all of this cast of characters of kind of lawless criminal circus folk running around following their base instincts and doing whatever they please. And I'm 5'9.'' [Laughter] This is my real mustache. It took me two years to grow this.

So Will's playing a good guy or a bad guy? We know so little about the project walking in.

John G: Yeah. It's one of those films that is kind of fascinating because it is in a way this comic book picture and has these superhero tendencies and is a very kind of action/adventure what you'd want from it – it's really void of any heroes and villains. You have Jonah Hex, and you have Quentin Turnbull, who John Malkovich plays. That's the hero/villain story, but everybody is flawed in their own way, which makes it really exciting because even though you have kind of 'good guys' and 'bad guys,' the lines are quite blurred as to who is really who. So Will's character, Lieutenant Grass, I'm sure he'll be able to tell you much more than I can, but it's really interesting because you're not quite sure where he falls. He really adheres to the law. He likes rules and regulations, and he really believes that this era of bounty hunters and crazy madmen is coming to an end, and the new order is going to be the information era. There's some really funny dialogue about that which makes slight reference to where we are now in terms of information becoming...well, here we are riding on this bus, hurtling through New Orleans doing multiple interviews. [laughter] So Will's character is a good guy, but when you stand him next to Josh Brolin as Jonah Hex – Jonah Hex, as I'm sure you all know, is this ruffian [with a] scarred face, never sleeps and drinks whiskey for breakfast. They look quite different even though they're both supposed to be essentially on the same side. It's kind of a situation where I think Will's character is a good guy, but you know in a film when there's a character who's clearly in the right but you kind of wish he would just get out of the way so the cool, bad person will come back and shoot some people.

Hex isn't one of the best known comic book characters in the world. Before you got cast in this part, were you even aware of the character?

I was. My awareness had actually come from – you know the animated series of Batman? They worked him into that episode, and I remember watching that and finding it a really fascinating episode and wanting to know more about who is this character. When I found out he was a DC Comics character as well and had been around for a while as kind of this unsung hero in the comic book world, I was really excited when I saw that they were turning this into a film. When I saw that Josh Brolin had been cast, I really felt like these people know what they're doing for sure and are going to make a really interesting version of this movie.

In terms of stylization, would you say this is going to look like a traditional Western, or is this a different take?

I've only spent about a day on the set, but they've got some really fantastic, amazing tricks up their sleeve. It's a little bit of everything. You see a little bit of the 'Dollars' trilogy and Spaghetti Westerns like Clint Eastwood in 'The Man With No Name.' You see that there, but we have Michael Fassbender, who's an amazing actor, playing this tough guy walking around these old villages in this wild Western format, but he's got all these tattoos on him. They're kind of pulling a lot of different references to make it feel like that traditional Western, but we've definitely grown accustomed as audiences to seeing everything each year grow a little bit bigger and a little bit more exciting. I think they're pulling out a lot of the stops on this movie.

As far as comedy, when somebody casts an actor like Will Arnett, it makes you ask, "What's the tone of the film?"

What's incredible is a lot of people are going to be really surprised, and I was too to get here and start work in my scenes with Will. It's not an inherently comic role that he's cast in. And he's fantastic. I think it's an opportunity I'm happy he's being given. Because in the past few years, he's obviously done amazingly well in the comic roles, and there's no question about it that the man's hilarious. Whether he can help it or not, he just is. He's tremendous in this role, and there's a lack irony and a lack of sarcasm to his performance. It's very, very straight with him playing this Union army soldier who's meticulous and buffed up and dead set on his ways. I think people are going to be really taken aback when they see Will in this movie, in a good way.

You're obviously growing your hair and beard out to be more old timey. What has it been like to prep to play a Union soldier in terms of wearing the uniform and carrying the hardware? Have you had much experience with that yet?

Yeah. The costume designer is wonderful, and much like all the other people on this film, they pulled from all sorts of inspirations to make sure that it's historically accurate. But it also is a filmed based on a comic book, so you can be a little lenient and go far out there with a lot of the choices. But it was very fun putting on the Union outfit for the first time. They have a really good eye for transporting people. I came in, and I had grown out my hair and grown more of a full beard, and I sat down and a few seconds later they'd trimmed my hair and gotten rid of all this [beard growth] so it was the kind of thing where I was a little embarrassed to go back to New York City without being made fun of by my friends. Some of them did, and rightly so. But they really did have a great eye for seeing somebody and saying, "This is what's going to work. You're going to look wonderful in this." Michael Shannon's in this picture, and I don't want to give anything away about his role, but he plays the ringleader of this kind of devilish circus act out in the desert. They've done some amazing things with makeup and prosthetic teeth to make him look the part.

It's a really unusual cast.

It is a unique cast. That's what really started to make me feel like I knew this was going to be special, because I knew the story of Jonah Hex was such an exciting one, and as we started to build the cast with each person, I thought it was such an interesting group of actors. Akiva Goldsmith is one of our producers here working with our director Jimmy, and they love what they do, and you really feel like they got a group of people together that they really like and admire. It feels as if we're kind of part of our own little devilish circus act. [laughs]

How has the film changed a little bit with Jimmy working on the script? I know that Neveldine and Taylor did the first draft. I'm curious as to whether what was originally on the page is what the film is going to be, or was it slight changes?

Mostly just slight changes. There hasn't been anything too grand that they changed. One thing I loved from the first draft that I read to the revisions is that I felt reading it that I wanted to know a little bit more about Megan Fox's character Leila. I wanted to know more about that character, and in the first draft it was a bit more mysterious. So most of the revisions have really been character-based and fleshing out the characters a bit. Areas towards the climax of the as usually in making a movie like this where the question is, 'How's it going to end? What's going to be the climax?' have gone through some changes here and there, but for the most part the script is pretty close to what I first read.

The Hex comics mix various other genres with the material from horror to the supernatural. Can you tell us how the film might do the same?

Absolutely. Especially because so much of it is being shot and takes place in New Orleans, which has a lot of spooky history and voodoo and the occult – it's a wonderful place to be shooting a movie like this. Because there are a lot of moments of sheer grit and realism in the comics and then some small, not the centerpiece of the film, but the backdrop of the Jonah Hex character does wrestle with real demons and actual supernatural elements he's fighting to come to terms with whether he thinks he's hallucinating in one moment, but it kind of goes off in another.

WILL ARNETT

So is the relationship between your Lt. Grass character and John Gallagher's Second Lt. Evan another example of a "bro-mance”?

Will Arnett: I suppose. It feels like it's pretty “bro-mance” these days, though. It's based on the fact that you had all these characters, who spent a lot of time...it would take infinitely longer to travel anywhere on horseback or whatever, and you had men spending a lot of time with each other – counting on each other, relying on each other. And those relationships are documented. All sorts of movies that cover the genre.

Because Hex isn't one of the best known comic book characters, do you have any sense of whether you're granted more freedom or autonomy here then would have been bestowed upon, say, Spiderman, or Batman filmmakers?

Probably. I mean, I think that there, I'm sure that there is a fan base, a core fan base that's very hardcore about it. And I'm sure they're sitting two people away from me. [Laughter] And so, I guess there's probably the danger of not worrying about it, because it seems to be not as well known a character. However, I think that it does seem like the filmmakers are very intent on trying to stay true to the character. Not because they don't want to alienate the fanboys, no offense, but because they want to really adhere to the story. But yeah, there probably is more leeway. If you look back, I mean, Jonah Hex was in a bunch of different incarnations, right? There was the original that was part of a different series of comics. Then he had his own comic as a spinoff, and then another series after that with different writers and different illustrators, so I think that he's kind of evolved as well. He's also made appearances in the Batman cartoon as well at a certain point. So even the actual comic itself kind of took liberties on the character itself. You hope that if there are people out there who feel that there's liberties taken can kind of understand that it's artistic license and not a desire to say "screw it" to the character.

For those of us a little unfamiliar with the script, can you talk a little bit about how it starts and the storyline and how much of an origin story it is?

It starts with this guy, who's kind of this renegade outlaw living in this kind of lawless West, and you decipher very early on that he's a bad ass. And that there's some kind of pathos there. There's something happening, and then you have...as the story moves, you understand he has this complicated relationship with the character Quentin Turnbull, played by John Malkovich, who is ultimately the villain in the story. But everybody's kind of a good guy, and everybody is a villain. Everybody makes a case for why they're doing what they're doing. And I think the only person who is not that sympathetic is probably Turnbull. He is kind of like pure evil.

And you know, I think that [Turnbill] represents a guy has nothing to lose because he's lost it all, which is a very difficult thing to combat against. I think that Jonah understands that. I think that you could draw parallels to terrorism and terrorists. People who are willing to do anything are very dangerous adversaries. So Jonah is kind of fighting that and he's kind of fighting the system and what that represents, and he's fighting his past, so here you have a guy who reluctantly decides to confront his demons. Something that he's clearly been running away from for a long time, and it culminates with this crazy, huge battle. I don't want to give too much away.

With you playing Union soldiers, is there any conflict with Jonah Hex having fought for the Confederacy?

Not really. Nothing that's kind of apparent in the script. It doesn't really seem like he's got any kind of allegiance to the Confederacy based on political views or anything.

In the book, originally, he actually surrendered to the Union troops.

Well, they do refer to that – that he becomes disillusioned with the Confederacy. I think that has more to do with what Turnbull was doing than the politics of the Confederacy. I'm not really sure. But there is reference to that, because that's how they find...that's kind of the kernel of the problem between Turnbull and Hex. When Hex turns himself in, he refuses to divulge the whereabouts of the platoon or whatever. And then they're able to gather, from the color of the mud on his boots, the red mud or clay. It only exists in one valley, so the Union kind of deciphers from that that's where they must be. So Turnbull holds Hex responsible for the death of his son, Jed Turnbull, who is also Hex's best friend. It's very complicated.

What's been the most difficult part of the movie? Physically or otherwise.

Probably getting to know the horses and the humility involved in that. John and I went up for a few days and we were riding horses and we, you know, we started slowly. And one day we got there and Josh's stunt guy and a couple of other stunt guys were there and they were riding around a big open field, pretty expertly. Full gallops and kind of laughing and circling around and stuff. And we found out that they'd only been riding a couple hours. And we had been riding for a couple of days and we were gingerly at a trot. So they're going to look like they're on Harleys and we're going to look like we're on Vespas.

So would you be willing to do another comic book movie after this one? I mean, you talked about Green Lantern coming out.

Yeah.

And if they keep scraping the bottom of the barrel, maybe Plastic Man, so...

Wow. Yeah.

You'd be a good Plastic Man. That's what he was trying to say.

You're trying to say that I'd be good at the bottom of a barrel? [Laughter] Is there a comic book character known as “Bottom Feeder”?

Probably.

Probably. But that's probably X-rated. He just feeds of bottoms.

I think we just came up with a new porn comic book.

Great. Let's do it.

"Jonah Hex" opens in theaters on June 18. Check out more coverage with the cast and crew on CBR, and be sure to take a look at our new Jonah Hex Hub!

http://www.comicbookmovie.com/fansites/TheDealio/news/?a=18264

John Malkovich on Jonah Hex
The eccentric actor shares some insight into his approach on playing the villainous Quentin Turnbull

With Jonah Hex hitting theaters June 18th, we'll finally be able to see if the movie will do the comic justice and hopefully stay away from that Wild Wild West factor. The full trailer looked better than I thought it would and the cast is excellent, for the most part. Comic Book Resources sat down with John Malkovich who plays the film's resident bad guy, Quentin Turnbull.

Excerpt from Comic Book Resources interview:

CBR: Did you have input into the look of your character at all?

Malko: No, not so much. I think it’s pretty much based on the comic. I think it’s pretty much along those lines. But I didn’t really ask for input either.

CBR: Did they send you the comics when you were deciding (on signing up for the film)?

Malko: Yeah, I had seen it a few times before. Jimmy (Hayward, the film's director) had done some mock-ups of them that he showed me in Los Angeles.

CBR: A lot of people won’t be familiar with your character. Can you talk about the character you play?

Malko: Turnbull was a Southern plantation owner and very wealthy and very powerful. He feels Jonah has caused his son to be killed in a way, so there’s a big sort of revenge factor there. Turnbull also leads a group of kind of marauders, former Confederate soldiers. Eventually he hopes to overthrow the government...my character’s not so much involved with [the supernatural]. Maybe a tiny bit. At a point in the story, Hex has kind of aberrations, and I appear very briefly as one of those, and we sort of work that out together. It wasn’t really quite what’s in the script.

CBR: Were you a fan of the genre (Comic Book Movies)?

Malko: Well, we’ve done, in production, we’ve done two comic novels: "Ghost World" and "Art School [Confidential" by Dan Clowes], so I’m not really an aficionado. I know a bit about it. I liked comics when I was a kid and read them and everything, but for me work is work. Everything allows for possibilities and failures.

CBR: As the villain, is your performance more restrained or animated?

Malko: Well, I don’t know, I spent the entire last two nights yelling, so I don’t know how restrained that is.

Malko also mentions that his performance doesn't come across as 'cartoony' as the script may have originally intended, but indicates there may be some of that element that comes out in his performance.

http://www.fearnet.com/news/interviews/b19221_jonah_hex_set_visit_will_arnett_john.html


'Jonah Hex' Set Visit: Will Arnett and John Gallagher Jr. -- Part 1
Today 10:30 AM PDT , by Joseph McCabe
Will Arnett

Last year I had the opportunity to visit the New Orleans set of Jonah Hex, this summer's big-screen take on the DC comic book character. I rode out to the set, located on the marshy outskirts of town, in a large bus filled with other online journalists and two of the film's stars – actors Will Arnett (pictured above) and John Gallagher Jr. Our bus ride was so long that the resulting interview with both gentlemen ran the better part of an hour, so I'm publishing it in two parts here on FEARnet. I'll have the second part of our conversation up in a few days. In the mean time, hit the jump now to read part 1.

Will, tell us a little bit about your character

Arnett: I play a character named Lt. Grass, and he has been sent by the government from Washington with 2nd Lt Evan to find Jonah Hex and get him to serve our needs, the government's needs, which is to put an end to Quentin Turnbull's antics. We talked about the idea that he represents the future. He's almost like a corporatized version of a military man in those days. He's very orderly and he believes that the future of the world lies in information and intelligence and not in the old rules or the non-rules of the Wild West.

So he represents kind of an end of an era or the beginning of the new era.

Obviously everyone knows you from [Arrested Development].

Arnett: Obviously [Laughs.]

And you've done so much comedic stuff in the past few years. When you first started out you went looking for more dynamic roles and serious stuff like that, and then shifted into comedy based on what came to you. Are you trying to make the shift back? Or are you just trying to say, "I just want to do what I want to do"?

Arnett: I said before a smarter man would have a plan. I have none. So there's nothing, there's nothing that has been well thought out. But this part represented a really great opportunity for me to do something different, that I hadn't done in a long time, and I had a relationship with [director] Jimmy Hayward. Obviously he comes out of animation and he directed Horton Hears a Who! That's how I got to know Jimmy, and he actually came to me and said "I'm working on this movie. I think this would be a great part, something that you could do." So I really fought for it. I mean I wanted to be a part of it and do something different, and I gotta tell you it's super exciting for me to be able to do something like this because I don't get offered parts like this at all. So it's very exciting.

You've got such an eclectic cast in the film, with Malkovich, Josh Brolin and with you playing the role; it's not your standard comic book cast. Is that something that attracted you as well?

Arnett: Well, yeah, of course. I mean, those guys, Josh and Malkovich, or John Malkovich or Sir John Malkovich. [Laughs.] That's how I think of him. They're such great actors, and of course they're also Oscar-nominated and Oscar-winning actors. That in and of itself is attractive enough. Plus the fact that they're actually really good. And you have guys like [Michael] Fassbender and John Gallagher, up and coming young actors from New York, it's just really cool to be part of something like this. It is an interesting cast I think. I'm not gonna put myself in that, but everybody else is, so it's very cool to be a part of it, a cast like this.

Were you a fan of the comic?

Arnett: You know I wasn't really that well versed in the comic, to be honest. Since I've become involved with the movie I've kind of looked at some of the stuff. Obviously there is a huge fanbase there for it, but I didn't even know it existed. I don't know a lot of things. I mean, that could take up three bus rides. [Laughs.]

You were describing what your character represents. Do you typically approach roles in that way or it is some sort of practical process of constructing what they look like, what they do?

Arnett: You mean do I approach it from when I'm setting out to do something like this?

Yeah.

Arnett: When I first read the script and I talked to Jimmy a few weeks later, cuz I'm a slow reader. He said, "What do you think?" And I kind of immediately said that I think this is really cool, this part is really cool, and here's how I think of this guy. He represents the future, he's kind of this thoughtful inevitability, he's kind of soulless. He's not a bad guy, but he's a little bit soulless in a sort of corporate way. I think that really resonated with Jimmy, and that was what he was looking for in terms of approach and that's how I've been thinking of that. Having said all that, I'm not going De Niro here.

Do you find there are moments where you want to inject some dry humor into the proceedings?

Arnett: No, not really, not in the making of the movie. I mean, I remember a couple of months ago doing a press conference. I'm always doing press conferences – on buses or trains. But I was doing a press conference with [Arrested Development writer] Mitch Hurwitz. I answered a question seriously and I kind of stopped, and he leaned forward and said "It's hard not to end on a joke, isn't it?" It really is. When it's your kind of bread and butter it becomes just a part of your thing. But I'm very sensitive to this material, this story and there's no part of me that wants to jump it up, as it were.

Are you disappointed that you didn't get cool facial hair?

Arnett: A little bit. My beard grows in scraggly so I actually do employ a mustache in this film but through techniques of makeup and wizardry.

Did you do any prep work on how to ride horses or any period stuff?

Arnett: Yeah, John and I had to spend a few days. That was humbling, right John?

Gallagher: Yeah, it was great. The first time I had been on a horse since fourth grade horse camp in Delaware where I grew up. So that was really nice. It was great to get out there. [On] almost any kind of action film or not, any film really [on which] you see a large amount of horses, chances are that they have [experience]. That's what they do, they go everywhere. They were talking that Will's horse, [who] played Flicka in the Flicka movie a few years ago. I think that some of the horses have done more films than I have. Actually I think they all have. Even the stand-in horse. But it was really fun to get out there, although, I don't know if you noticed this, once we got on the set, once I had the wardrobe on they had to help [me] onto the horse. It was the boots.

Arnett: The boots. It was all the special saddle stuff and the swords and everything. Luckily for us, there was no scene where we have to run up to a horse and jump on it. Because it would look like "What is happening?"

What's the one action sequence that you haven't really filmed yet? What's the one you're really looking forward to doing?

Arnett: Well, we're shooting tomorrow night part of this battle that takes place on the river and this fort and where John and I come up the river on a cutter and then they… John Malkovich's character starts launching cannonballs and whatever at us. That's gonna be pretty fun, standing on the front of the boat, yelling. That'll be cool to see how that goes down. I mean, a lot of other kinda fight stuff doesn't really take place with us. That's our big kind of action moment. Of course, our characters are immediately in way over their heads. We kind of launch this attack and they just overwhelm us. That's going to be cool. There are really a lot of great set pieces in this. The first day when we got to ride into this western town that they built here in City Park. What was really cool was, just coming into town, John and I had to lead with all these horses behind us and chickens running around. I think I can speak for John, we'll never enter a movie as coolly as that, on horseback, looking to kick some ass.

Are either of you Civil War buffs or Western buffs?

Gallagher: Not especially. When I was growing up I was definitely just as much, I think, as any young boy at some point, a huge fan of Westerns and adventure films of that era. So that makes it all the more exciting to be cast in one, let alone one that I actually think is going to jostle some people because it's, as I was telling you earlier, it does have all the makes of kind of your traditional kind of cowboy movie, but there's a lot of other elements, like the supernatural element and even just like the subtle kind of political undertones that go through the film. It's going to make it stand out in its genre.

Arnett: And – even though it's a period piece, it of course takes place right after the Civil War – it's going to really resonate. It's kind of a timeless feel to it because of all these issues.

When Josh Brolin signed on he had said that the script was kind of campy and tongue in cheek. Is it still going to be campy?

Arnett: I don't think so. There's been a lot of work that has been done on the script and, like I said before, I don't intend to personally bring any campiness to it. I think that it's important to the fans of Jonah Hex to kind of stay true to that vision, that idea of the original comic and I think that through the series of rewrites it's really done that. Josh is, I know that he is very adamant about making sure that this script is really in that right and true place. I think that they have done a lot of great work in that respect, so, yeah, I don't think that there's going to be any campiness, at this point anyway there's not.

This is Jimmy Hayward's first live-action film. I'm curious if you could talk about his energy and what he's like and what he's looking for.

Gallagher: He's the perfect director for this kind of film because he just has boundless imagery and he's such a fan of film and it really shows, just day-to-day, the way that he is on the set and he is always positive. This is just the one day that we had with him, but what really struck me was that he has this momentum, this energy about getting it done and making it exciting and making it look as fantastic as it should.

Arnett: Yeah, even when we're rehearsing, before we start shooting, that it is really important for a director, to have a very clear vision of how he wants it to be. The tone is so important, and I think that Jimmy has that ability to understand the big picture, understand the overall tone of it and yet at the same time, while maintaining that overall vision, knowing what it takes, knowing what the details are, having an answer for every single question no matter how small. Months ago, Jimmy had a very specific vision for absolutely every gunshot. In a scene where five people get shot they had the stunt guy flipping over backwards, and he's like, "Well, that's not going to work for this guy but it might work for this guy." Having that ability to, going into it, really know exactly what you want [from] every single beat, that's so crucial. I think Jimmy's really got that. Like John says he's got boundless energy and that's going to be important. It's a huge undertaking, there's so many moving parts to any film, but especially something like this. It's action-intensive; and he's also got to stay true to this comic. He's done a great job balancing all this stuff out.

I don't know if they've announced it yet, but is this PG-13 or is this R? I don't know.

Arnett: I don't really know either. I don't think they f#%@#&! know. Well, now it's R. [Laughs.]

Do you have a sense of the level of grittiness on the Western Grit scale, between John Ford and Sam Peckinpah? Is there any way to gauge it?

Arnett: You know, I don't know. It's hard to say I think. It's actually going to have its own… It kinda lives in its own world. Same way that the comic kinda lived in its own world, even though you have this kind of really troubled hero who is kind of, not necessarily one-hundred-percent purely good. It's going to be hard to hold it up against other Westerns, and as John said, it has this supernatural aspect to it as well. So, yeah it kind of lives in its own world

On that same note, anyone that was part of the project, did they mention any specific films? I know that a lot of people talked about The Man with No Name trilogy as far as the look.

Arnett: Well, no, not really. I mean, I think it's going to have a down-and-dirty look to it, of course. There's kind of a darkness to a lot of what's happening. The story is very heavy. Here you have a guy, Brolin's character, Jonah Hex, who is a very troubled guy with a very sordid past, very complicated. So I think that the overall esthetic is going to be very... I think it's going to pretty hard-hitting and dark but not inaccessibly dark

Obviously this is a film where they built the environment – you guys are on location and you guys get horseback riding training. But you've done animated work where you're working basically with pure imagination. Now there's so many films that use extensive green screen. Do you prefer it when you have everything real, when you're in an environment, or does it matter to you? Do you just bring different tools to each thing?

Arnett: Yeah, I think that you probably bring different tools. Each medium has it's own. I mean, John has done a lot of theater, especially recently, and he can attest – it's kind of like each one has their own benefits.

Gallagher: Oh, definitely. Films that I've worked on have been pretty moderately budgeted, pretty small independent films. This is really the first legitimate studio picture that I've done, and I feel like I'm going to be a little spoiled by it because Jimmy and his team are very committed to making it all happen right there before your eyes. Which I think with this kind of film is really important. I wouldn't really be able to speak about if there's something that prohibits you about green screen work or anything like that.

Arnett: It does. There are things about when you do an animated film, you're living completely in your own head, especially when you're not working with other actors in the room at all. So now you're also kind of guessing how the other person's going to interpret the other line and you work on stuff, kind of green-screen stuff where you have to employ a little bit of that same thing, use your imagination. I did this kids' movie for Disney that's coming out this summer. Zach Galifianakis and I had to react to nothing. Which is, again, a very strange thing and you've got to get your mind around that. Coming on something like this where everything is very practical, I think John's right, there is a kind of a luxurious feel living in the real world even though the story is kind of out there. To be actually physically dealing with something. It feels like a luxury at this point.

You guys have been to New Orleans for at least a few days, can you talk a little bit about the advantages of shooting in New Orleans and what do you get to do at night when you are not shooting?

Gallagher: Eat... a lot.

Arnett: Yeah. The food's great.

Gallagher: It's amazing

Arnett: You know, of course, there's a tremendous amount of nightlife here in New Orleans and we've been able to see this great music and stuff. We kind of missed Jazz Fest, probably for the best. It's just a little insane. New Orleans is an important town. I mean, very few other places where you can wake up and walk outside and people are walking around with a 64-ounce cocktail with a strap on it.

Or the Big Ass Beer, as they call it.

Arnett: Yeah, the Big Ass Beer. I mean it's a world unto itself I'm sure.

Have you guys, being actors or in your life, partied here in New Orleans before?

Gallagher: I'd never even been…when we came here a few weeks ago to get started on it. It's been a joy to just be working on the film and it's been a joy to be able to explore the city.

Arnett: I was never here. I don't really take part in the drinking anymore, but I'm lucky that I never came here back then. I may have died here.

You guys are a matching set onscreen to a certain extent; and [to Will] being a superior officer, how does that play off of each other, if he is looking up to Hex and you're out to find Hex and you're straight-laced. What has the rapport been like, building those two characters together?

Arnett: We spend a lot of time together on and off set while we've been here. I'll let John go on this, but I will say that [with] my character there's a little bit of envy there, because he does revere Hex so much, that there's a part of him that really admires him and it's difficult because I feel like my character really recognizes that and there's a mixture of jealousy, and that kinda comes out with me feeling he's being insubordinate.

Gallagher: There is really a unique little triangle between our two characters and Jonah Hex that is actually kinda striking. I think that it is actually something that you don't necessarily expect when you're reading the script to an action blockbuster film. There's this really deep-rooted psychological thing that's happening where I'm having this hero worshiping of Jonah Hex and I kind of wish that Jonah Hex was my superior officer. I'd ride around on a horse all day and take orders from him, and, like you said, Grass is caught in the middle with his own agenda and his own kind of loathing of Jonah Hex and his grief of the way that he kind of gets things done.

Arnett: There's some great scenes with Evan when, at one point he goes to bring Hex back to the Union camp and you really see his admiration for Hex, his desire to kind of know a little bit more about him and learn from him and then at the end of the movie…

http://www.pulpwoodqueen.com/2010/06/pulpwood-queen-talks-with-actor-jason.html

Dear Readers,

I am sitting in my Beauty and the Book with actor, Jason Ament, who just got his hair styled and thought that perhaps all of you might like to know what it is really like in the film industry in the Ark.la.tex. You know Shreveport/Bossier City, Louisiana is now called "Hollywood South" as so many films are being made in that area and state. Really this is just a hop and skip to my shop and I have had everybody from film directors, to wardrobe assistant to Kevin Costner stop by for a hair cut or manicure/pedicure.
Jason Ament has been a friend for some time so when he stopped by for a surprise visit last week to make his appointment, I asked him if I could do a blog on his TAKE of the film experience. So here we go.....

Kathy: Jason, so tell me, what are we are working are now bucko?

Jason: Actually, recovery... I just finished a Nicolas Cage film called "Drive Angry" in the Shreveport area. I unfortunately injured my foot doing stunt work on this film.

Kathy: What happened?

Jason: I was stunt doubling Billie Burke, of Twilight fame, he plays the villain in the film, and during the fight sequence I took a wrong step and rolled my ankle.

Kathy: So that's why you're wearing a boot! (Jason is wearing this knee high orthopedic boot contraption from his doctor visit)

Jason: Yeah, these aren't even like the boots I was wearing in the film. I had to wear snakeskin cowboy boots with this leather low riding rock star Jim Morrison pants.

Kathy: Oh, I can visualize it now! Are you with me readers!

Jason: You are too kind. So I'm resting up and very excited about the premiere of the film "Jonah Hex" that opens nationwide Friday, June 18th.

Kathy: So will be that be showing in Shreveport?

Jason: Absolutely!

Kathy: Tell me about that film.

Jason: It's based on a comic book from the early 70's that was turned into a graphic novel several years back. It stars Josh Brolin as Jonah, John Malkovich is the villain, and Megan Fox as the love interest. And another incredible actor named Michael Fassbender, he was in "Inglorious Bastards".

Kathy: So what did you do?

Jason: I was Josh's stand-in and photo double and then I also had my first experience doing stunt work on "Jonah Hex". We had an amazing crew and the level of talent between the people I just finished was outstanding. Watching Malkovich work was truly phenomenal. Having worked already with Josh on the film "W" in the same capacity, I was already aware of what a tremendous presence and actor that he really is. That in itself would be enough for me to want to go and see the movie.

http://www.teenhollywood.com/2010/06/14/megan-fox-our-jonah-hex-interview

Megan Fox: Our "Jonah Hex" Interview

By Lynn Barker on June 14, 2010 7:00:00 AM UTC

Gorgeous, 24-year-old, brunette actress Megan Fox of Transformers fame might not be a first pick for "best galpal" by teen females who usually dis the gorgeous, popular girl at school but we've been digging deeper and we totally admire this young woman's outspoken, take-no-b.s. 'tude!

Fed up with director Michael Bay's more controlling nature, she likened him to Hitler and lost her role in the next robot flick. Megan draws personal lines in the sand and won't cross them.

Someone who respects her take on fame very much is her Jonah Hex co-star Josh Brolin who just told us "when I read some of these articles that she had done, as acerbic and rebellious as she could be, I wanted to see how real that was. Nobody can handle that kind of fame that fast, at 22 years old. And I thought she was handling it really well. She's the real deal and a scrapper. She's grounded and very gravelly".

Jonah Hex, a supernatural Western adventure, is based upon a series of comics about a horribly-scarred bounty hunter out for payback. Megan's character Lilah is a saloon call girl who knew him way back when, can see past his destroyed face and is firmly in his corner.

Picture this bombshell in shades of taupe and brown from her ultra-high, heel-studded taupe pumps to short taupe dress topped by a gorgeous tan suit coat. She looks very business glam! We wish we looked that good at the office!

Let's get Megan's take on the super tight corset she wears in the film, her action sequences, her philosophy of Hollywood survival and what's up next....

TeenHollywood: So were you just glad to get away from the robots and try the old West instead?

Megan: I like working on action films and I like working on movies that are comic book-based or are things that I watch or I loved when I was a kid, so it wasn’t really about getting away from the robots. I enjoyed making both films.

TeenHollywood: Having done another action movie in the past, what was more challenging, doing the action scenes in this movie or squeezing into that corset every day?

Megan: Actually there was one gunfight scene that (the stunt team) had been choreographing for I think a couple of weeks, and I showed up and I had a minute to get it down and rehearse it and it was really difficult for me to shoot the old-style gunslinger guns because I have tiny little baby hands (she holds up her well-manicured hands... yep, they're tiny!)

TeenHollywood: Wow, very delicate. So just holding the guns was hard?

Megan: They're really large and really heavy, so just the physicality of actually having to pull that off was really difficult. This was more action-heavy for me, it was more intricate the action in the movie than in previous movies that I’ve done.

TeenHollywood: That corset was amazing!

Megan: I loved the corset. When I showed up for camera tests everyone thought I was in pain, or I was hurting or something was wrong with me, because my waist was so small but I enjoyed it and I wish they’d come back into style.

TeenHollywood: Despite being a corset-lover, are you a modern girl? Are you into today's gadgets?

Megan: I love electronics. I have computers, i-phones, i-pods, i-pads and all that stuff.

TeenHollywood: Your character Lilah and Jonah Hex obviously have a "past" before we see them in the film. Did you two work on building up a back-story so it was easier to portray the relationship?

Megan: Josh and I had a conversation about what their past relationship could have been and why she would be so dedicated and so in love with someone who treated her the way that he did and someone who was not able to love. We came up with a back-story between the two of us as to what had gone on in the past and why she was so dedicated to him and so loyal and hurt for him so badly.

TeenHollywood: Kind of a beauty and the beast feel there. You would think that Lilah was treated so badly over the years that she would be out for payback, for retribution. Do you ever feel that way?

Megan: (laughs) I can't talk about retribution. I'm all full of candy canes and lollypops. I don't even know what that means.

TeenHollywood: Would you call Lilah a hooker with a heart of gold?

Megan: Hooker with a heart of gold was not in the character breakdown when I got (the script). I felt it was an amazing opportunity to be in a project with Josh and with John Malkovich and with Michael Fassbender and all these incredible actors and I wanted to be part of it in any way that I could. I don't feel like she's stereotypical and it's something completely different from anything I've done and no one can accuse me of doing the same thing twice and I'm proud of that.

TeenHollywood: Since the film is based on comics, are you okay with changing the character and making her your own or might that upset the comics fans?

Megan: I feel it's impossible to please the hard core comic book fans because they¹ll never be happy no matter what you do. I'm a Lord of the Rings fan and I'll go on the forums because they complain about that Frodo is eating the (special) bread outside of Mordor instead of the Mines of Moria and they get really mad. (we laugh) (Yet) Peter Jackson and company won like 30-something Oscars for that movie so you can't focus completely on pleasing them because you'll never win and you're excluding a whole other world of people who weren't aware of the comic in the first place. So you have to take some liberties to make it into a live-action film or it wouldn't work.

TeenHollywood: It's been a crazy few years for you. How have you handled everything and not gone insane?

Megan: I don't know. I think I've maintained the same relationships that I've had before this happened to me and I've kept people close to me that I love that I respect and that have looked out for me and take care of me.

I had sort of distanced myself from the Hollywood crowd. I don't really go out and socialize that way. Oddly, you wouldn't think it but I'm very domestic and I think that keeps me sane, just my personal relationships have kept me grounded.

Megan: The people who are famous and make it to this level of fame for whatever reason, whether it's deserved or not, you have to be a strong person to survive it because it is very difficult to be under the microscope every moment of every day and everything that leaves your mouth becomes this sensationalized news story and no matter what your intentions were when you first said it. So, it becomes overwhelming.

Am I that rebellious? I think there are many sides to me and to who I am in my personality and I think the only thing that is rebellious about me is that I don't have a lot of fears as far as this industry is concerned and I'll do things that other people may be afraid to do or afraid to say. But, in my personal life, I'm actually very responsible with my personal relationships and things like that.

TeenHollywood: Where does that strength come from?

Megan: (laughs) I have no idea. I don't know. I've always been that way.

TeenHollywood: Are you planning to direct or produce your own films some day?

Megan: Definitely not directing. I have absolutely no skill set that would suggest I'd be able to do something like that. Possibly producing I guess at some point if I were able to I'd like to get into that. Sure.

TeenHollywood: Is there an upcoming project that you are proud of?

Megan: Oh. I have a movie with Mickey Rourke hopefully coming out this fall called Passion Play, which I was really excited to work on and I'm really proud of that. It was an amazing experience making that movie. It's a modern film noir and Mickey's character is a trumpet player who's down on his luck. He was a heroin addict and he comes across my character who's part of a traveling freak show. She has bird wings that sprouted out of her back when she went through puberty. It¹s this bizarre strange relationship that they have and it follows them and it's very tragic and so on.

TeenHollywood: That sounds wildly interesting.

http://www.mid-day.com/entertainment/2010/jun/150610-Josh-Brolin-Jonah-Hex-Sequel.htm\

Sequel for Jonah Hex... already?
By: Agencies Date: 2010-06-15 Place: Hollywood

Josh Brolin discusses returning to play DC Comics' classic anti-hero Jonah Hex for a possible sequel.

On June 18, the actor will make his first attempt at playing a comic book character as he rides to the big screen in Jonah Hex.

The movie still doesn't open for another week in the US but as with any comic book character that is turned into a big summer action film the question remains: will there be a sequel? When asked if he'd return for a sequel if the movie were successful, he said, "Always and I said that during the shooting,"

"I love the movie," declares Brolin, "I'm happy with it, you know? Anything can be a franchise at some point, but the movie itself and by itself I'm proud of, for sure," he concluded. "Absolutely!"

Jonah Hex comes to theaters June 18 and stars Megan Fox, Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, Michael Fassbender, Will Arnett, Julia Jones, Michael Shannon and Aidan Quinn. Jimmy Hayward directs.

http://www.latinoreview.com/news/interview-josh-brolin-megan-fox-and-jimmy-hayward-talk-about-jonah-hex-10226

Interview: Josh Brolin, Megan Fox and Jimmy Hayward Talk About Jonah Hex
By George 'El Guapo' Roush on June 15, 2010

Interview: Josh Brolin, Megan Fox and Jimmy Hayward Talk About Jonah Hex

Jonah Hex has been around for a long time but doesn't have the recognition of other comic book heroes probably because of its western theme and ugly hero. I've never read the comic but the movie was a fun, albeit slow and confusing at times wild west tale of adventure. If the comic is this cool, I'll have to start reading it.

At the press conference for the film, Director Jimmy Hayward, producer Andrew Lazar, and stars Josh Brolin and Megan Fox talk about working on Jonah Hex, a possible director's cut of the film, the make-up, future projects and more.

Josh, obviously you were working off a script and a graphic novel, but what was it like to create a superhero from scratch, whose reputation didn’t precede him? And Megan, what was it like to get away from those robots?

Brolin: What robots? Oh, that’s a different movie. [This was] stemming from a comic book that has had three lives and that wasn’t necessarily very successful, but I loved the idea that it refused to die, so it was a survivalist comic book. But it allowed us to take luxuries and do what we wanted to do as long as we had the blessing of the comic book artists. The core of the characters is there, but we go off on all these different tangents - we’re allowed to.

Fox: I like working on action films, and I like working on movies that are comic book based, or that have this theme, because they’re things I watched or loved as a kid. So it wasn’t really about getting away from the robots, if that’s what you were saying. I enjoyed making both films.

Obviously there’s a lot of contemporary resonances in this script; it’s an anti-terrorist movie. Can you talk about bringing modern references in it?

Hayward: As the Quentin Turnbull thing developed, he turned into a secessionist kind of guy. Then we sort of added the dynamite vests, and as we continued to develop it, we weren’t drawing direct parallels to now, but it’s impossible not to, in that he’d be like the first American terrorist. I don’t think we really set out to draw tons of lines to exactly what’s happening now, but it’s kind of difficult, because we live in an era of terrorism.

Lazar: That evolved; it was kind of like the idea of this ultimate revenge, and how can we relate to Turnbull, in contemporary terms? I think we did make a decision once we saw the dynamite vest that this is a guy who’s willing to exact terror. The Civil war, bloody as it was, soldiers lined up on either side, and this was a guy who was willing to destroy institutions and innocent people in order to get exactly what he wanted. I think it’s topical, and makes it a little different than just a regular Civil War/western film.

Could you comment on the challenges of the makeup and prosthetics, and what it was like dealing with that on a daily basis?

Brolin: A pain in the ass, because – well, it’s not that we didn’t have the money that we chose to go practical – which, Lon Chaney being one of my heroes and loving the idea of morphing, and having the opportunity to do that I embrace. [But] it’s kind of the story that Alec Baldwin told before he did The Edge, which was out in Alaska, with a bear, and Anthony Hopkins, when he was sitting in his nice, really warm apartment in New York, reading the script, saying, “I think this could be cool,” and then smash cut to out in the middle of nowhere, when it’s forty degrees below zero, and going, “Maybe I shouldn’t have done this movie.” We did three hours of makeup a day. It was very tough, there were many different layers: I had a mouthpiece that held my mouth all the way back and that was attached to the back of my neck, and then we did three more layers on top of that, and then I walked around with half a mustache and half a beard in New Orleans for three months. So there was nothing attractive.

Hayward: We actually talked about him going further with the eye.

Brolin: Yeah, we actually had the eye, which is in the comic book, and I started to get an infection like within the hour, and I’m not that dedicated (laughs). But to be honest with you, I think – it sounds like bullshit, but it’s not – it lent to the curmudgeon-y feel of the character itself. I couldn’t eat, so we would really – a lot of movies, you’d say, “I work fourteen hours a day,” but really you only work six, and you’re in your trailer, playing Nintendo the rest of the time, and we actually worked fourteen, sixteen hours a day, so I couldn’t eat that whole time. I would stuff myself in the morning, and then just drink water throughout the whole day, and it was a hundred degrees. So it was a pain. Would I do it again? Yeah. Because it’s like having a baby, now I look at the end result, and go, “that’s pretty cool.”

There’s a number of animated directors that have done computer animated films that are moving into live action films, can you talk about being at the forefront of that?

Hayward: It’s a massive learning experience and a big jump, a big change. I think it’s natural because they go through waves – they bring guys from commercials, and music videos, and maybe that’s just what’s happening. Those are big, expensive movies, managing huge groups of people, and I guess it seems like a natural jump. But it’s a tricky, difficult one.

It takes a lot to turn a two-dimensional cartoon character into a full-blooded onscreen persona. Can you talk about the casting of Josh and Megan?

Hayward: 90% of the great casting choices for this movie go to Josh. Josh was leading the film in the beginning, and brought in his friends. That’s the reason why people like Michael Fassbender and Megan and John Malkovich were in the movie, because Josh is friends with them. We picked all kinds of other people around them, but I think his friendships with John and stuff to get them involved with the film helped.

Lazar: I can say we actually did get our first choice. Josh Brolin was our first choice for Jonah Hex. Coming off the pretty amazing run that Josh had, over the last couple of years, and he was also in The Young Riders. So we tried several times to get Josh Brolin to do the movie and he turned us down a few times. We just wouldn’t say no, we just kept going back and we wore him down. As for Megan, the role of Lilah actually has some depth to it as well. It’s not just an action movie, there’s dramatic scenes. We really felt that there’s an edge that Megan has as an actress, that she can play both tough, and that longing - that she wants to get out of her life and she wants to connect to Jonah. We thought that it was a really great match, and I have to say that Josh actually did have a little bit to do with that casting too. The studio and myself were both thinking of Megan, and I think Josh sent me an email saying, “I think I have a really good idea who might play Lilah, what do you think of Megan Fox?” and I said, “Yeah, that’s a really great idea.”

Brolin: You know what’s funny though, and it kind of sucks, is you go, guys, there wasn’t that much thought put into it, and I know what you’re all thinking, but there actually was, because however Megan was perceived, I like the idea of giving somebody, even though this is an absurd, ridiculous, fun escapist film, I like the idea of giving somebody the opportunity like somebody gave me in saying, “Hey, we can go a little further with the acting here.” Even though we made it fun, we did a lot of different takes, where she’s crying, where she’s not crying, and there’s somewhat of a dialect there, it’s kind of a generalized, bucolic dialect. But when I read some of these articles that she had done, it showed how acerbic and rebellious she could be, I wanted to see how real that was. When you’re 22 and have that fame, nobody can handle that kind of fame that fast, at 22 years old, and I thought she was handling it really well. So when we met, I just wanted to make sure she was the real deal, and a scrapper, and that she could go head to head with John, and that she could really hold her own. There’s definitely a truck driver mentality there.

Megan, do you have anything to say about that?

Fox: No, I think it’s wonderful, what they’re saying, and I appreciate it, and I’m humbled by their comments.

Megan, having done other action movies in the past, what was more challenging: doing the action scenes in this movie, or squeezing into that corset everyday?

Fox: Actually, there was one gunfight scene that stunts had been choreographing for a couple of weeks, and I had minutes to get it down and rehearse it, and it was really difficult for me to shoot the old-style gunslinger guns, because I have tiny little baby hands, and they’re really large and really heavy, so just the physicality of having to pull that off was really difficult. This was more action-heavy for me, it was more intricate, the action, in this movie, than in previous movies that I’ve done.

But what about that corset?

Fox: I loved the corset. When I showed up for camera tests, everyone thought I was in pain, or hurting, that something was wrong with me, because my waist was so small, but I enjoyed it, and I wish they’d come back into style.

Historically, is that what women of the day, or even, women of the night, wore?

Fox: I’m not the person to ask about that, but I would assume so.

Hayward: We were entertainingly accurate about that stuff, like the trains, stuff like that, but with the clothes, he’d start in the basis of reality and then move off a little bit, but yeah, that stuff was pretty typical. We did a lot of photographic research.

Brolin: The question is, how did you like the corset? Trying to project it onto her and pawn it off on her, but it’s really about you.

We assume too much by looking at your character and how she got there and everything, but did you build this up in your head, and did you come up with any character back story?

Fox: Well, Josh and I had a conversation about what their past relationship could have been, and why she would be so dedicated and so in love with someone who sort of treated her the way that he did, and was not able to love, and we came up with a back story between the two of us, what things had gone on in the past, and why she was so dedicated and loyal to him.

Brolin: It’s a Beauty and the Beast thing, physically, cosmetically. But then, I think the parallel and the kinetic connection is because they’re equally broken. Then there’s also – I mean, I hate saying this, but I will - an older-younger type of thing. I don’t think that’s really true, but it might be.

Was there ever talk of making this an R-rated feature, and is there going to be a director’s cut?

Hayward: A few weeks ago, we got our rating, so a few weeks ago we had an R-rated movie we had to trim down. There’s a very fine line between what makes it there. We made the decision to go PG-13 quite a long time ago. Well before we started shooting, we decided that was the way to go. We just had to nip and tuck some stuff. You know how the MPAA is, “Can you have him punch him three times instead of five times?” There certainly is a version of the movie that has a lot more violence in it, but we never had a lot of blood, or anything like that. Just more people died, or there were more punchings and beatings, stuff like that.

Will that be on the DVD? Will there be an unrated version?

Hayward: Probably, I would imagine so.

Brolin: I think it belongs on DVD. I was very against them going PG-13 in the beginning. Then I was very happy, and I think they made the much better decision in going PG-13 because it’s not gratuitous. When you watch this movie, you expect it to be gratuitous, and it’s not, and I think that’s much more interesting than if it were a grindhouse type of thing.

Hayward: Yeah, it’s much more interesting to look at Malkovich’s eyes when he executes a guy than to see the exit wound of stuff coming out of his head.

Is there going to potentially be a significantly longer version?

Hayward: No, not super long. Not really. Well, all those scenes will expand and have more violence and stuff like that. There’s definitely deleted scenes we’re gonna put out for sure.

There’s a catchphrase, “Don’t get mad, get even.” We see this as a driving force behind Jonah, that his relationship to retribution. I was wondering if Josh and Megan, could you talk about your own relationship to retribution? How that sits with you, do you understand the motivation of what Jonah is going through?

Fox: No, you start. You don’t have an answer?

Brolin: No, I don’t.

Fox: Do you have highlights in your hair? It looks nice. I like what you have going on.

Brolin: Yes. (pause) No, I don't. Look, this is how I’ll bullshit my way through this answer. Retribution, if you go back to these Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson movies – the last movie that I saw, the last character that I saw that I wanted to be, because he did almost superhuman things, and I just wanted that escape for an hour and a half, was Jackie Chan in “Rumble In The Bronx.” But Charles Bronson, Clint Eastwood, that whole thing of whatever anger you feel in your life, whatever, you’re riding your bike down the street when you’re 13, and somebody yells something at you, or throws something at you, for some reason or another, and you don’t feel the ability to fight back, those little things that happen in your life, you do. It’s like the cartoon on the back of the comic book where someone kicks sand in your face; you want that one moment where you have the perfect thing to say, or the perfect punch where you don’t have to get in a fight, you can just knock the guy out in one punch and walk away. This is my version of that. This is my wanting to live that. It’s my attempt at other people coming to the movie saying, Jonah Hex is really cool, he does these things, he’s with people like Lilah, they’re broke and it comes from a dark place, but we find levity in the movie, I want to be that guy for an hour and a half. The intention is to leave the movie theater and feel a bit puffed up, but not so much that you go put a cap in somebody’s ass. White version of saying that.

Fox: Well, I can’t top that. Retribution. I’m all full of candy canes and lollipops. I don’t even know what that means.

Back in those days, people had guns and knives as their favorite gear, they would collect them. Do you guys collect anything?

Brolin: Just adult toys (laughs).

Fox: I don’t collect things. Sorry. Well, I love electronics. I have lots of computers, iPhones, iPads, those sort of things.

Josh, you’ve played completely fictionalized, and characters based on real people. Does this fall in a middle ground, because although this is a fictional character, there’s a big history there that people know about. Can you talk about that?

Brolin: Yeah, it’s nice to be able to springboard from a place that, even though it’s not real, it’s real for me. Once you look at the comic book and you say, okay, I have a sketch here. You know, I’ve said before that a lot of times I’ll do a movie and I’ll go to my son, and he’ll sketch out the character. I’ll explain it to him, I won’t even read the script, or anything, sometimes, but I’ll say, this is how I see this character, and this is the ambiance of the story, all that, and he’ll sit there and sketch stuff out. Sometimes I can use it, and sometimes I can’t. Like Grindhouse, I used it, and he made the character really fat, and I was like, “F*ck.” I was used to springboarding from that kind of place, so this was great for me. And look, as fun as it is, as dark as it stems from, it’s good to have people in mind. Or even if I use characters, like actors, whether it be Robert Mitchum or whoever, and I watch some of his movies, is there one little gem that I can steal, and extrapolate on that.

Megan, Josh said it’s been a crazy few years for you. How have you handled everything and not gone insane? And Josh, what’s your favorite John Malkovich moment in or on the movie?

Fox: I don’t know. I think I’ve maintained the same relationships that I’ve had before this happened to me, and I kept people close to me that I love and respect, and look out for me and take care of me, and I’ve distanced myself from the Hollywood crowd. I don’t go out and socialize that way. You wouldn’t think it, but I’m sort of oddly very domestic, and I think that keeps me sane. My personal relationships keep me grounded.

Brolin: We were doing the clay fight sequence, me and John, this was fairly early on in the movie. We finished a take, and it was fairly violent. The great thing about John is he’s so in character, but he doesn’t stay in character. So we’ll finish a take, and will be looking at each other, and we’ll be yelling GRRRR!, and they yell cut, and he goes, “So when are you doing the Woody film?” So there was one take that we did, and John says, “Josh, can you come here for a second?” And I said, “Yeah, John, what’s up?” and he says, “Um, can you pull my finger?” And I said, “Seriously?” And he says, “Yeah, just grab my finger, and just pull it.” And I pulled his finger, and I heard a crack, and I go, “Oh f*ck, man. Are you alright?” And he goes, “Yeah, I think you broke it. But I’m fine.” That’s my best John Malkovich.

Megan, Josh talked about seeing you as rebellious, but in your earlier comment you said you’re more domestic. How do you see yourself, and how does it feel to be 22 and have to deal with all this fame?

Fox: Well, I’m 24 now. Well, you have to be a strong person to survive this kind of fame, because it is very difficult to be under the microscope every moment of every day. Everything that leaves your mouth becomes this sensationalized news story, no matter what your intentions were when you first said it, so it becomes overwhelming. Am I that rebellious? I think there are many sides to me, and my personality, and I think the only thing that is rebellious about me is that I don’t really have a lot of fears as far as this industry is concerned, and I’ll do things that maybe other people are afraid to do, or afraid to say. But in my personal life, I’m actually very responsible with my personal relationships. I’ve always been that way.

Brolin: And rebellion, just to be clear, can mean holding onto some of your own integrity, of not playing into the idea of sensationalism. We all have our moments, and that’s your guys’ job - to take those moments and make them turgid, gaseous, make them big, and it’s bigger than the person is. When you start believing your own press, that’s when it gets really sad. But that’s part of the rebellion that I responded to, because she was still her. She’s still very grounded, very gravelly, which I like.

A lot of women in Hollywood are beginning to develop their own projects for production companies. Do you see directing soon in your future?

Fox: Definitely not directing. I have absolutely no skill set that would suggest that I would be able to do something like that. But possibly producing I guess at some point, if that. If I were able to, I’d like to get into that, sure.

Josh, I was wondering if you would address some of the buzz in the trades about you perhaps doing another comic book adaptation, the third Men in Black film where you would apparently play the younger Tommy Lee Jones. Is there any accuracy to those reports?

Brolin: Uh-huh.

What other projects do you have lined up? Also, Megan, when you get a character described as a hooker with a heart of gold, what do you say to yourself about making this clichéd character something real or convincing?

Fox: Well, hooker with a heart of gold was not in the character breakdown when I got it, but I felt like it was an amazing opportunity for me to be involved in a project with Josh, and John Malkovich, and Fassbender - with all these incredible actors, who were coming in to make this movie, and I just wanted to be a part of it any way that I could. I don’t really feel like she’s that stereotypical. Perhaps you’re responding to the fact that I’m playing the character, that that sort of makes it stereotypical. But it’s something completely different from anything I’ve done, and no one can accuse me of doing the same thing twice, which I’m proud of. As for future projects, I have a movie with Mickey Rourke hopefully coming out this fall called Passion Play, which I was really excited to work on. It’s an independent right now, and I’m really proud of that, and I had an amazing experience making that movie. It’s sort of a modern film noir, and Mickey’s character is a down on his luck trumpet player and is a heroin addict, and he comes across my character, who is part of a traveling freak show. She has bird wings that sprouted out of her back when she went through puberty, and it’s sort of this very bizarre strange relationship that they have, and it’s very tragic.

Josh, can you talk about your upcoming projects? You’ve got the Woody next?

Brolin: Uh, I’ve got a woody next. I’ve got chubby after that. And then I have a half-mast after that (laughs). And then after that, I’m just going to relax and be flaccid. Thank you so much for that, by the way, it made my day. I’ve got Woody’s movie that was in Cannes, I’ve got Oliver’s movie, Wall Street, that was in Cannes, which was very special to me, that I had those two movies in Cannes, we got this coming out next week, we got True Grit coming out Christmas, Men In Black, if it all works out, is going to happen. We just sold something to Warner Bros. that I’ll direct probably next year, and a couple of other projects that are really good that I can’t talk about.

Megan, there’s an inside joke about your character that reveals she is a character from the comics. If this is a big hit, would you be interested in reprising the role?

Fox: Of course. I mean, if that was an opportunity that was presented to me, absolutely. I would love that.

When you’re dealing with an adaptation that already has a fanbase, are you confident about taking liberties, or do you feel obligated to be faithful to the source material?

Hayward: Josh brought that up. One of the things about Jonah Hex is the fanbase is unfortunately – it’s not Superman, you know what I mean? So people don’t have a lot of pre-awareness about Jonah Hex, and like Josh said, we are friends with Jimmy and Justin, and the guys who do the modern versions of Hex. Hex has gone to the future, and there’s a Road Warrior version of Jonah Hex, so there is an opportunity to play a little bit more with the story because there’s different origin stories for Jonah Hex, so there’s not as many hardened rules, as opposed to Batman, or Superman or something like that. I think we had a lot more leeway. I am a fan of the comic, and have been reading it for a long time, and love the fact that Jimmy and Justin continued to do it with different artists.

Josh and Megan, do you feel freedom to take those liberties?

Fox: Well, I feel like it’s impossible to really please the hardcore comic book fans, because they’ll never be happy no matter what you do. I go on to Lord of the Rings forums, because I’m a fan, and they’ll complain that Frodo was eating the Lambis bread outside of Mordor instead of the mines of Moria, and they get really mad. But Peter Jackson and company won like, thirty-something Oscars for that movie! So you can’t focus completely on pleasing them, because you’ll never win, and then you’re excluding a whole other world of people who weren’t aware of the comic in the first place, so I think you have to take some kind of liberties to make it into a live action film, or it wouldn’t work.

Hayward: That was brilliant, by the way. A lot of people kept talking about how bloody the movie would have to be, but really there’s only a few versions of the modern – there’s an image run that’s really violent, but if you go back to the [John] Albano stuff, that’s pretty PG-13 stuff. It’s more Jonah in the Old West. Then there’s some supernatural stuff, and it kind of goes all over the place.

Jonah Hex, at least in the current run, didn’t really seem to have any supernatural powers. I wanted to know where the speaking to the dead power developed in the process of development?

Hayward: It came up later, but there are more supernatural versions of Jonah, with his history with the Indians, and whether or not he grew up in a tribe, and whether or not his father traded him to the Indians, whether or not there’s medicine men involved. So there was a pocket of some of the more middle areas of the comic that actually had some supernatural stuff in it, and that did develop later on.

I wanted to ask about casting Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Tom Wopat.

Hayward: Wow. Tom Wopat? He was Slocum, the guy Josh throws in the fighting ring. We actually read Tom Wopat in New York, and we didn’t even know it was Tom Wopat. We didn’t know – it’s like, “is that one of the Duke boys?” He just came in and read for us, and Andrew and I both watched [The Dukes of Hazzard] when we were kids.

Lazar: Originally he was described as a peg-legged guy, he wasn’t really formidable, and when Tom came in and read, it was like, wow, Slocum, if he’s this dangerous and formidable guy that really creates a whole other dimension to the scene.

Hayward: We didn’t know it was Tom Wopat until they told us after. We were surprised, because he’s got a successful Broadway thing going on.

Lazar: Jeffrey Dean Morgan is a friend of Warner Brothers, he’s done a bunch of movies there, and we tried to get somebody who had some gravitas to go up against Josh, and it’s actually one of my favorite scenes in the film, so we asked him to do us a favor, and he did it.

Was that for free?

Lazar: Pretty much. When you come in and do a small part like that, even though it’s an interesting role, Jeffrey Dean’s a pretty respected actor, and I could have cast him as Jonah Hex, had Josh passed.

There were reports of fairly extensive reshoots, and that Francis Lawrence came in to help to some degree. Can you clarify about that?

Brolin: There’s a difference between reshoots and additional shoots. There’s always perception, like oh, is there a problem? First of all, who cares, because the end result is all that matters. And the one thing is, is that when we saw the initial cut, the base cut, we go, oh wow, there’s a lot more humor than we thought here, so maybe it’s not as dark and gritty throughout the whole thing. Maybe we can base the movie as dark, and then we can get and find some kind of different colors of levity. So it was more about enhancing what already was. I think that we missed some things during additional shooting that we didn’t realize, because tonally, there’s no model for this. It’s like three different genres in one- not quite spaghetti western, supernatural movie, or action movie, but there’s elements of all those things. It was kind of like plowing out a completely new genre road, and saying, now okay, now we know what we have, how can we extrapolate on that?

Lazar: And also, with the studio, we realized we really did want to come out in the summer, and we made the movie for a fairly modest price, so from September to June, we recognized the opportunity to make a couple of things, create a couple of new set pieces, pretty standard fare. We were allowed to make the movie a little bit bigger and open up the scope a little bit.

Hayward: After they moved our date from September to June gave us the resources to go and put a bigger, crazier end on it. Francis came in as a consultant and helped us out. He’s a friend of the family, of Andrew, Akiva [Goldsman], and us, and it was a big help.

Brolin: And also someone who knows scope. Francis is the pinnacle of scope, what he’s done. That was really important to us, when we realized what we had. The whole color palette, and the whole thing. It was like, wow, this could be seem much bigger than it is, with the budget that we used.

Hayward: We didn’t start off with a bunch of superweapons at first and all sorts of stuff like that. So he was a good help.

Brolin: We did this movie for six thousand dollars (laughs).

In this film your character is friends with crows, horses and dogs.

Brolin: This is what I heard you say: crows, hos and dogs. We should just end the press conference there don’t you think?

Can you talk about your character’s relationship with the animals in the film?

Brolin: I think the loneliness of who he is, and the fact that he spends so much time alone – and I know this personally, having grown up on a ranch - the relationship with animals starts to become much more intense than your relationships with humans, so that’s a very natural thing, especially in westerns. There’s always been that thing of the guy talking to his horse, or a guy who has a dog, western type characters. The crows are more symbolism, an omen, of this purgatory life that he leads, I think the crows always represent something that’s fairly purgatorial. Something a little dark. The fact that they lead him, which I think is really interesting too, may lead him to chaos.

http://dvd-max.com/information/jonah-hex-press-conference-read-or-listen-to-josh-brolin-megan-fox-director-jimmy-hayward-and-producer-andrew-lazar

Jun/10

16
JONAH HEX Press Conference: Read or Listen to Josh Brolin, Megan Fox, Director Jimmy Hayward and Producer Andrew Lazar

Posted by Steve 'Frosty' Weintraub in Information

Usually press conferences suck. They’re almost always a waste of time. After all, when you’ve got a group of actors and filmmakers sharing a stage, you can never get a good rhythm going with any one person because as soon as they answer a question, it’s the next persons turn. This is why I’m happy to report the press conference for Jonah Hex was awesome. Unlike some that can be boring and filled with safe answers, Josh Brolin and Megan Fox were really open and honest about everything. Also, I never knew Brolin could be so funny, as he had the room laughing many times. And on top of that, Megan Fox quoted The Lord of the Rings message boards when answering if she felt the freedom to take liberties with her character as opposed to staying true to the comic books. My jaw hit the ground as she said:

“I go on to Lord of the Rings forums, because I’m a fan, and they’ll complain that Frodo was eating the Lambis bread outside of Mordor instead of the mines of Moria, and they get really mad. I think you have to take some kind of liberties to make it into a live action film, or it wouldn’t work.”

Um…wow. So if you’d like to read or listen to an awesome press conference with Josh Brolin, Megan Fox, Director Jimmy Hayward and Producer Andrew Lazar about making Jonah Hex, hit the jump!

Like I always do, I’ve provided the entire transcript below. But this is one I REALLY recommend listening to. Trust me, you’ll laugh a lot.

Jonah Hex opens this weekend. You can watch some clips here.

Josh Brolin as Jonah Hex movie posterQuestion: Josh, obviously you were working off a script and a graphic novel, but what was it like to create a superhero from scratch, whose reputation didn’t precede him? And Megan, what was it like to get away from those robots?

Josh Brolin: What robots? Oh, that’s a different movie. [This was] stemming from a comic book that has had three lives and that wasn’t necessarily very successful, but I loved the idea that it refused to die, so it was a survivalist comic book. But it allowed us to take luxuries and do what we wanted to do as long as we had the blessing of the comic book artists. The core of the characters is there, but we go off on all these different tangents – we’re allowed to.

Megan Fox: I like working on action films, and I like working on movies that are comic book based, or that have this theme, because they’re things I watched or loved as a kid. So it wasn’t really about getting away from the robots, if that’s what you were saying. I enjoyed making both films.

Obviously there’s a lot of contemporary resonances in this script; it’s an anti-terrorist movie. Can you talk about bringing modern references in it?

Jimmy Hayward: As the Quentin Turnbull thing developed, he turned into a secessionist kind of guy. Then we sort of added the dynamite vests, and as we continued to develop it, we weren’t drawing direct parallels to now, but it’s impossible not to, in that he’d be like the first American terrorist. I don’t think we really set out to draw tons of lines to exactly what’s happening now, but it’s kind of difficult, because we live in an era of terrorism.

Andrew Lazar: That evolved; it was kind of like the idea of this ultimate revenge, and how can we relate to Turnbull, in contemporary terms? I think we did make a decision once we saw the dynamite vest that this is a guy who’s willing to exact terror. The Civil war, bloody as it was, soldiers lined up on either side, and this was a guy who was willing to destroy institutions and innocent people in order to get exactly what he wanted. I think it’s topical, and makes it a little different than just a regular Civil War/western film.

Could you comment on the challenges of the makeup and prosthetics, and what it was like dealing with that on a daily basis?

Brolin: A pain in the ass, because – well, it’s not that we didn’t have the money that we chose to go practical – which, Lon Chaney being one of my heroes and loving the idea of morphing, and having the opportunity to do that I embrace. [But] it’s kind of the story that Alec Baldwin told before he did The Edge, which was out in Alaska, with a bear, and Anthony Hopkins, when he was sitting in his nice, really warm apartment in New York, reading the script, saying, “I think this could be cool,” and then smash cut to out in the middle of nowhere, when it’s forty degrees below zero, and going, “Maybe I shouldn’t have done this movie.” We did three hours of makeup a day. It was very tough, there were many different layers: I had a mouthpiece that held my mouth all the way back and that was attached to the back of my neck, and then we did three more layers on top of that, and then I walked around with half a mustache and half a beard in New Orleans for three months. So there was nothing attractive.

Megan Fox as Leila in Jonah Hex movie posterHayward: We actually talked about him going further with the eye.

Brolin: Yeah, we actually had the eye, which is in the comic book, and I started to get an infection like within the hour, and I’m not that dedicated (laughs). But to be honest with you, I think – it sounds like bullshit, but it’s not – it lent to the curmudgeon-y feel of the character itself. I couldn’t eat, so we would really – a lot of movies, you’d say, “I work fourteen hours a day,” but really you only work six, and you’re in your trailer, playing Nintendo the rest of the time, and we actually worked fourteen, sixteen hours a day, so I couldn’t eat that whole time. I would stuff myself in the morning, and then just drink water throughout the whole day, and it was a hundred degrees. So it was a pain. Would I do it again? Yeah. Because it’s like having a baby, now I look at the end result, and go, “that’s pretty cool.”

There’s a number of animated directors that have done computer animated films that are moving into live action films, can you talk about being at the forefront of that?

Hayward: It’s a massive learning experience and a big jump, a big change. I think it’s natural because they go through waves – they bring guys from commercials, and music videos, and maybe that’s just what’s happening. Those are big, expensive movies, managing huge groups of people, and I guess it seems like a natural jump. But it’s a tricky, difficult one.

It takes a lot to turn a two-dimensional cartoon character into a full-blooded onscreen persona. Can you talk about the casting of Josh and Megan?

Hayward: 90% of the great casting choices for this movie go to Josh. Josh was leading the film in the beginning, and brought in his friends. That’s the reason why people like Michael Fassbender and Megan and John Malkovich were in the movie, because Josh is friends with them. We picked all kinds of other people around them, but I think his friendships with John and stuff to get them involved with the film helped.

Lazar: I can say we actually did get our first choice. Josh Brolin was our first choice for Jonah Hex. Coming off the pretty amazing run that Josh had, over the last couple of years, and he was also in The Young Riders. So we tried several times to get Josh Brolin to do the movie and he turned us down a few times. We just wouldn’t say no, we just kept going back and we wore him down. As for Megan, the role of Lilah actually has some depth to it as well. It’s not just an action movie, there’s dramatic scenes. We really felt that there’s an edge that Megan has as an actress, that she can play both tough, and that longing – that she wants to get out of her life and she wants to connect to Jonah. We thought that it was a really great match, and I have to say that Josh actually did have a little bit to do with that casting too. The studio and myself were both thinking of Megan, and I think Josh sent me an email saying, “I think I have a really good idea who might play Lilah, what do you think of Megan Fox?” and I said, “Yeah, that’s a really great idea.”

Brolin: You know what’s funny though, and it kind of sucks, is you go, guys, there wasn’t that much thought put into it, and I know what you’re all thinking, but there actually was, because however Megan was perceived, I like the idea of giving somebody, even though this is an absurd, ridiculous, fun escapist film, I like the idea of giving somebody the opportunity like somebody gave me in saying, “Hey, we can go a little further with the acting here.” Even though we made it fun, we did a lot of different takes, where she’s crying, where she’s not crying, and there’s somewhat of a dialect there, it’s kind of a generalized, bucolic dialect. But when I read some of these articles that she had done, it showed how acerbic and rebellious she could be, I wanted to see how real that was. When you’re 22 and have that fame, nobody can handle that kind of fame that fast, at 22 years old, and I thought she was handling it really well. So when we met, I just wanted to make sure she was the real deal, and a scrapper, and that she could go head to head with John, and that she could really hold her own. There’s definitely a truck drviver mentality there.

Megan, do you have anything to say about that?

Fox: No, I think it’s wonderful, what they’re saying, and I appreciate it, and I’m humbled by their comments.

Megan, having done other action movies in the past, what was more challenging: doing the action scenes in this movie, or squeezing into that corset everyday?

Fox: Actually, there was one gunfight scene that stunts had been choreographing for a couple of weeks, and I had minutes to get it down and rehearse it, and it was really difficult for me to shoot the old-style gunslinger guns, because I have tiny little baby hands, and they’re really large and really heavy, so just the physicality of having to pull that off was really difficult. This was more action-heavy for me, it was more intricate, the action, in this movie, than in previous movies that I’ve done.

But what about that corset?

Fox: I loved the corset. When I showed up for camera tests, everyone thought I was in pain, or hurting, that something was wrong with me, because my waist was so small, but I enjoyed it, and I wish they’d come back into style.

Historically, is that what women of the day, or even, women of the night, wore?

Fox: I’m not the person to ask about that, but I would assume so.

Hayward: We were entertainingly accurate about that stuff, like the trains, stuff like that, but with the clothes, he’d start in the basis of reality and then move off a little bit, but yeah, that stuff was pretty typical. We did a lot of photographic research.

Brolin: The question is, how did you like the corset? Trying to project it onto her and pawn it off on her, but it’s really about you.

We assume too much by looking at your character and how she got there and everything, but did you build this up in your head, and did you come up with any character back story?

Fox: Well, Josh and I had a conversation about what their past relationship could have been, and why she would be so dedicated and so in love with someone who sort of treated her the way that he did, and was not able to love, and we came up with a back story between the two of us, what things had gone on in the past, and why she was so dedicated and loyal to him.

Brolin: It’s a Beauty and the Beast thing, physically, cosmetically. But then, I think the parallel and the kinetic connection is because they’re equally broken. Then there’s also – I mean, I hate saying this, but I will – an older-younger type of thing. I don’t think that’s really true, but it might be.

Was there ever talk of making this an R-rated feature, and is there going to be a director’s cut?

Hayward: A few weeks ago, we got our rating, so a few weeks ago we had an R-rated movie we had to trim down. There’s a very fine line between what makes it there. We made the decision to go PG-13 quite a long time ago. Well before we started shooting, we decided that was the way to go. We just had to nip and tuck some stuff. You know how the MPAA is, “Can you have him punch him three times instead of five times?” There certainly is a version of the movie that has a lot more violence in it, but we never had a lot of blood, or anything like that. Just more people died, or there were more punchings and beatings, stuff like that.

Will that be on the DVD? Will there be an unrated version?

Hayward: Probably, I would imagine so.

Brolin: I think it belongs on DVD. I was very against them going PG-13 in the beginning. Then I was very happy, and I think they made the much better decision in going PG-13 because it’s not gratuitous. When you watch this movie, you expect it to be gratuitous, and it’s not, and I think that’s much more interesting than if it were a grindhouse type of thing.

Hayward: Yeah, it’s much more interesting to look at Malkovich’s eyes when he executes a guy than to see the exit wound of stuff coming out of his head.

Is there going to potentially be a significantly longer version?

Hayward: No, not super long. Not really. Well, all those scenes will expand and have more violence and stuff like that. There’s definitely deleted scenes we’re gonna put out for sure.

There’s a catchphrase, “Don’t get mad, get even.” We see this as a driving force behind Jonah, that his relationship to retribution. I was wondering if Josh and Megan, could you talk about your own relationship to retribution? How that sits with you, do you understand the motivation of what Jonah is going through?

Fox: No, you start. You don’t have an answer?

Brolin: No, I don’t.

Fox: Do you have highlights in your hair? It looks nice. I like what you have going on.

Brolin: Yes. (pause) No, I don’t. Look, this is how I’ll bullshit my way through this answer. Retribution, if you go back to these Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson movies – the last movie that I saw, the last character that I saw that I wanted to be, because he did almost superhuman things, and I just wanted that escape for an hour and a half, was Jackie Chan in “Rumble In The Bronx.” But Charles Bronson, Clint Eastwood, that whole thing of whatever anger you feel in your life, whatever, you’re riding your bike down the street when you’re 13, and somebody yells something at you, or throws something at you, for some reason or another, and you don’t feel the ability to fight back, those little things that happen in your life, you do. It’s like the cartoon on the back of the comic book where someone kicks sand in your face; you want that one moment where you have the perfect thing to say, or the perfect punch where you don’t have to get in a fight, you can just knock the guy out in one punch and walk away. This is my version of that. This is my wanting to live that. It’s my attempt at other people coming to the movie saying, Jonah Hex is really cool, he does these things, he’s with people like Lilah, they’re broke and it comes from a dark place, but we find levity in the movie, I want to be that guy for an hour and a half. The intention is to leave the movie theater and feel a bit puffed up, but not so much that you go put a cap in somebody’s ass. White version of saying that.

Fox: Well, I can’t top that. Retribution. I’m all full of candy canes and lollipops. I don’t even know what that means.

Back in those days, people had guns and knives as their favorite gear, they would collect them. Do you guys collect anything?

Brolin: Just adult toys (laughs).

Fox: I don’t collect things. Sorry. Well, I love electronics. I have lots of computers, iPhones, iPads, those sort of things.

Josh, you’ve played completely fictionalized, and characters based on real people. Does this fall in a middle ground, because although this is a fictional character, there’s a big history there that people know about. Can you talk about that?

Brolin: Yeah, it’s nice to be able to springboard from a place that, even though it’s not real, it’s real for me. Once you look at the comic book and you say, okay, I have a sketch here. You know, I’ve said before that a lot of times I’ll do a movie and I’ll go to my son, and he’ll sketch out the character. I’ll explain it to him, I won’t even read the script, or anything, sometimes, but I’ll say, this is how I see this character, and this is the ambiance of the story, all that, and he’ll sit there and sketch stuff out. Sometimes I can use it, and sometimes I can’t. Like Grindhouse, I used it, and he made the character really fat, and I was like, “F*ck.” I was used to springboarding from that kind of place, so this was great for me. And look, as fun as it is, as dark as it stems from, it’s good to have people in mind. Or even if I use characters, like actors, whether it be Robert Mitchum or whoever, and I watch some of his movies, is there one little gem that I can steal, and extrapolate on that.

Megan, Josh said it’s been a crazy few years for you. How have you handled everything and not gone insane? And Josh, what’s your favorite John Malkovich moment in or on the movie?

Fox: I don’t know. I think I’ve maintained the same relationships that I’ve had before this happened to me, and I kept people close to me that I love and respect, and look out for me and take care of me, and I’ve distanced myself from the Hollywood crowd. I don’t go out and socialize that way. You wouldn’t think it, but I’m sort of oddly very domestic, and I think that keeps me sane. My personal relationships keep me grounded.

Brolin: We were doing the clay fight sequence, me and John, this was fairly early on in the movie. We finished a take, and it was fairly violent. The great thing about John is he’s so in character, but he doesn’t stay in character. So we’ll finish a take, and will be looking at each other, and we’ll be yelling GRRRR!, and they yell cut, and he goes, “So when are you doing the Woody film?” So there was one take that we did, and John says, “Josh, can you come here for a second?” And I said, “Yeah, John, what’s up?” and he says, “Um, can you pull my finger?” And I said, “Seriously?” And he says, “Yeah, just grab my finger, and just pull it.” And I pulled his finger, and I heard a crack, and I go, “Oh f*ck, man. Are you alright?” And he goes, “Yeah, I think you broke it. But I’m fine.” That’s my best John Malkovich.

Megan, Josh talked about seeing you as rebellious, but in your earlier comment you said you’re more domestic. How do you see yourself, and how does it feel to be 22 and have to deal with all this fame?

Fox: Well, I’m 24 now. Well, you have to be a strong person to survive this kind of fame, because it is very difficult to be under the microscope every moment of every day. Everything that leaves your mouth becomes this sensationalized news story, no matter what your intentions were when you first said it, so it becomes overwhelming. Am I that rebellious? I think there are many sides to me, and my personality, and I think the only thing that is rebellious about me is that I don’t really have a lot of fears as far as this industry is concerned, and I’ll do things that maybe other people are afraid to do, or afraid to say. But in my personal life, I’m actually very responsible with my personal relationships. I’ve always been that way.

Brolin: And rebellion, just to be clear, can mean holding onto some of your own integrity, of not playing into the idea of sensationalism. We all have our moments, and that’s your guys’ job – to take those moments and make them turgid, gaseous, make them big, and it’s bigger than the person is. When you start believing your own press, that’s when it gets really sad. But that’s part of the rebellion that I responded to, because she was still her. She’s still very grounded, very gravelly, which I like.

A lot of women in Hollywood are beginning to develop their own projects for production companies. Do you see directing soon in your future?

Fox: Definitely not directing. I have absolutely no skill set that would suggest that I would be able to do something like that. But possibly producing I guess at some point, if that. If I were able to, I’d like to get into that, sure.

Josh, I was wondering if you would address some of the buzz in the trades about you perhaps doing another comic book adaptation, the third Men in Black film where you would apparently play the younger Tommy Lee Jones. Is there any accuracy to those reports?

Brolin: Uh-huh.

What other projects do you have lined up? Also, Megan, when you get a character described as a hooker with a heart of gold, what do you say to yourself about making this clichéd character something real or convincing?

Fox: Well, hooker with a heart of gold was not in the character breakdown when I got it, but I felt like it was an amazing opportunity for me to be involved in a project with Josh, and John Malkovich, and Fassbender – with all these incredible actors, who were coming in to make this movie, and I just wanted to be a part of it any way that I could. I don’t really feel like she’s that stereotypical. Perhaps you’re responding to the fact that I’m playing the character, that that sort of makes it stereotypical. But it’s something completely different from anything I’ve done, and no one can accuse me of doing the same thing twice, which I’m proud of. As for future projects, I have a movie with Mickey Rourke hopefully coming out this fall called Passion Play, which I was really excited to work on. It’s an independent right now, and I’m really proud of that, and I had an amazing experience making that movie. It’s sort of a modern film noir, and Mickey’s character is a down on his luck trumpet player and is a heroin addict, and he comes across my character, who is part of a traveling freak show. She has bird wings that sprouted out of her back when she went through puberty, and it’s sort of this very bizarre strange relationship that they have, and it’s very tragic.

Josh, can you talk about your upcoming projects? You’ve got the Woody next?

Brolin: Uh, I’ve got a woody next. I’ve got chubby after that. And then I have a half-mast after that (laughs). And then after that, I’m just going to relax and be flaccid. Thank you so much for that, by the way, it made my day. I’ve got Woody’s movie that was in Cannes, I’ve got Oliver’s movie, Wall Street, that was in Cannes, which was very special to me, that I had those two movies in Cannes, we got this coming out next week, we got True Grit coming out Christmas, Men In Black, if it all works out, is going to happen. We just sold something to Warner Bros. that I’ll direct probably next year, and a couple of other projects that are really good that I can’t talk about.

Megan, there’s an inside joke about your character that reveals she is a character from the comics. If this is a big hit, would you be interested in reprising the role?

Fox: Of course. I mean, if that was an opportunity that was presented to me, absolutely. I would love that.

When you’re dealing with an adaptation that already has a fanbase, are you confident about taking liberties, or do you feel obligated to be faithful to the source material?

Hayward: Josh brought that up. One of the things about Jonah Hex is the fanbase is unfortunately – it’s not Superman, you know what I mean? So people don’t have a lot of pre-awareness about Jonah Hex, and like Josh said, we are friends with Jimmy and Justin, and the guys who do the modern versions of Hex. Hex has gone to the future, and there’s a Road Warrior version of Jonah Hex, so there is an opportunity to play a little bit more with the story because there’s different origin stories for Jonah Hex, so there’s not as many hardened rules, as opposed to Batman, or Superman or something like that. I think we had a lot more leeway. I am a fan of the comic, and have been reading it for a long time, and love the fact that Jimmy and Justin continued to do it with different artists.

Josh and Megan, do you feel freedom to take those liberties?

Fox: Well, I feel like it’s impossible to really please the hardcore comic book fans, because they’ll never be happy no matter what you do. I go on to Lord of the Rings forums, because I’m a fan, and they’ll complain that Frodo was eating the Lambis bread outside of Mordor instead of the mines of Moria, and they get really mad. But Peter Jackson and company won like, thirty-something Oscars for that movie! So you can’t focus completely on pleasing them, because you’ll never win, and then you’re excluding a whole other world of people who weren’t aware of the comic in the first place, so I think you have to take some kind of liberties to make it into a live action film, or it wouldn’t work.

Hayward: That was brilliant, by the way. A lot of people kept talking about how bloody the movie would have to be, but really there’s only a few versions of the modern – there’s an image run that’s really violent, but if you go back to the [John] Albano stuff, that’s pretty PG-13 stuff. It’s more Jonah in the Old West. Then there’s some supernatural stuff, and it kind of goes all over the place.

Jonah Hex, at least in the current run, didn’t really seem to have any supernatural powers. I wanted to know where the speaking to the dead power developed in the process of development?

Hayward: It came up later, but there are more supernatural versions of Jonah, with his history with the Indians, and whether or not he grew up in a tribe, and whether or not his father traded him to the Indians, whether or not there’s medicine men involved. So there was a pocket of some of the more middle areas of the comic that actually had some supernatural stuff in it, and that did develop later on.

I wanted to ask about casting Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Tom Wopat.

Hayward: Wow. Tom Wopat? He was Slocum, the guy Josh throws in the fighting ring. We actually read Tom Wopat in New York, and we didn’t even know it was Tom Wopat. We didn’t know – it’s like, “is that one of the Duke boys?” He just came in and read for us, and Andrew and I both watched [The Dukes of Hazzard] when we were kids.

Lazar: Originally he was described as a peg-legged guy, he wasn’t really formidable, and when Tom came in and read, it was like, wow, Slocum, if he’s this dangerous and formidable guy that really creates a whole other dimension to the scene.

Hayward: We didn’t know it was Tom Wopat until they told us after. We were surprised, because he’s got a successful Broadway thing going on.

Lazar: Jeffrey Dean Morgan is a friend of Warner Brothers, he’s done a bunch of movies there, and we tried to get somebody who had some gravitas to go up against Josh, and it’s actually one of my favorite scenes in the film, so we asked him to do us a favor, and he did it.

Was that for free?

Lazar: Pretty much. When you come in and do a small part like that, even though it’s an interesting role, Jeffrey Dean’s a pretty respected actor, and I could have cast him as Jonah Hex, had Josh passed.

There were reports of fairly extensive reshoots, and that Francis Lawrence came in to help to some degree. Can you clarify about that?

Brolin: There’s a difference between reshoots and additional shoots. There’s always perception, like oh, is there a problem? First of all, who cares, because the end result is all that matters. And the one thing is, is that when we saw the initial cut, the base cut, we go, oh wow, there’s a lot more humor than we thought here, so maybe it’s not as dark and gritty throughout the whole thing. Maybe we can base the movie as dark, and then we can get and find some kind of different colors of levity. So it was more about enhancing what already was. I think that we missed some things during additional shooting that we didn’t realize, because tonally, there’s no model for this. It’s like three different genres in one- not quite spaghetti western, supernatural movie, or action movie, but there’s elements of all those things. It was kind of like plowing out a completely new genre road, and saying, now okay, now we know what we have, how can we extrapolate on that?

Lazar: And also, with the studio, we realized we really did want to come out in the summer, and we made the movie for a fairly modest price, so from September to June, we recognized the opportunity to make a couple of things, create a couple of new set pieces, pretty standard fare. We were allowed to make the movie a little bit bigger and open up the scope a little bit.

Hayward: After they moved our date from September to June gave us the resources to go and put a bigger, crazier end on it. Francis came in as a consultant and helped us out. He’s a friend of the family, of Andrew, Akiva [Goldsman], and us, and it was a big help.

Brolin: And also someone who knows scope. Francis is the pinnacle of scope, what he’s done. That was really important to us, when we realized what we had. The whole color palette, and the whole thing. It was like, wow, this could be seem much bigger than it is, with the budget that we used.

Hayward: We didn’t start off with a bunch of superweapon at first and all sorts of stuff like that. So he was a good help.

Brolin: We did this movie for six thousand dollars (laughs).

In this film your character is friends with crows, horses and dogs.

Brolin: This is what I heard you say: crows, hos and dogs. We should just end the press conference there don’t you think?

Can you talk about your character’s relationship with the animals in the film?

Brolin: I think the loneliness of who he is, and the fact that he spends so much time alone – and I know this personally, having grown up on a ranch - the relationship with animals starts to become much more intense than your relationships with humans, so that’s a very natural thing, especially in westerns. There’s always been that thing of the guy talking to his horse, or a guy who has a dog, western type characters. The crows are more symbolism, an omen, of this purgatory life that he leads, I think the crows always represent something that’s fairly purgatorial. Something a little dark. The fact that they lead him, which I think is really interesting too, may lead him to chaos.

http://www.sheknows.com/articles/815718/10-questions-with-megan-fox-1

10 Questions with Megan Fox
Megan Fox dishes film and fame
Joel D Amos

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Megan Fox may not be in the next Transformers movie, but her career is still hotter than ever. After successful turns in those Michael Bay blockbusters, Megan Fox has built a career outside the toy story that includes the horror flick Jennifer’s Body and what could be her breakout role in Jonah Hex opposite Josh Brolin.

Fox sat down to discuss life as a superstar at only 24 years old and how she keeps grounded as well as what’s next for Megan Fox in her life, which does not include running around with Shia Labeouf and those titanic Transformers.

Megan Fox and Josh Brolin in Jonah Hex

Her co-star, Josh Brolin, has a theory about why her prostitute with a heart of gold and Jonah Hex fit so well together in their onscreen romance. "It’s a Beauty and the Beast thing, physically, cosmetically," Brolin said and laughed.

Megan Fox finds film fantastic
SheKnows: You’ve done pretty well for yourself in action films, from Transformers to this explosive feature, Jonah Hex. Do you personally enjoy the genre?

Megan Fox: I like working on action films and I like working on movies that are comic book based, or that have this theme, because they’re things I watched or loved as a kid. So it wasn’t really about getting away from the robots, if that’s what you were saying. I enjoyed making both films.

Megan FoxSheKnows: What is tougher -- action sequences or wearing that 18-inch corset?

Megan Fox: Actually, there was one gunfight scene that stunts had been choreographing for a couple of weeks and I had minutes to get it down and rehearse it. It was really difficult for me to shoot the old-style gunslinger guns, because I have tiny little baby hands, and they’re really large and really heavy, so just the physicality of having to pull that off was really difficult. This was more action-heavy for me, it was more intricate, the action in this movie, than in previous movies that I’ve done. As for the corset, I loved the corset. When I showed up for camera tests, everyone thought I was in pain, or hurting, that something was wrong with me, because my waist was so small, but I enjoyed it and I wish they’d come back into style.

SheKnows: Did you work closely with Josh Brolin to craft a backstory for you and Josh Brolin’s character?

Megan Fox: Well, Josh and I had a conversation about what their past relationship could have been, and why she would be so dedicated and so in love with someone who sort of treated her the way that he did, and was not able to love. We came up with a backstory between the two of us, what things had gone on in the past and why she was so dedicated and loyal to him.

SheKnows: Do you have any collections? Are you a collector?

Megan Fox: I don’t collect things. Sorry. Well, I love electronics. I have lots of computers, iPhones, iPads and those sorts of things.

Megan Fox on fame
SheKnows: Things have gotten crazy for you in the last couple of years, how have you managed to keep your head?

Megan Fox strikes a pose in Jonah Hex

Megan Fox: I don’t know. I think I’ve maintained the same relationships that I’ve had before this happened to me, and I kept people close to me that I love and respect, and look out for me and take care of me, and I’ve distanced myself from the Hollywood crowd. I don’t go out and socialize that way. You wouldn’t think it, but I’m sort of oddly very domestic and I think that keeps me sane. My personal relationships keep me grounded.

SheKnows: You’re only 24, is it difficult to wrap your head around the type of fame you have already?

Megan FoxMegan Fox: Well, you have to be a strong person to survive this kind of fame, because it is very difficult to be under the microscope every moment of every day. Everything that leaves your mouth becomes this sensationalized news story, no matter what your intentions were when you first said it, so it becomes overwhelming. Am I that rebellious? I think there are many sides to me and my personality, and I think the only thing that is rebellious about me is that I don’t really have a lot of fears as far as this industry is concerned and I’ll do things that maybe other people are afraid to do or afraid to say. But in my personal life, I’m actually very responsible with my personal relationships. I’ve always been that way.

SheKnows: Women are taking control of their careers in Hollywood, such as Elizabeth Banks and Salma Hayek, each having formed production companies. Do you have any desire to do so, or perhaps direct one day?

Megan Fox: Definitely not directing. I have absolutely no skill set that would suggest that I would be able to do something like that. But possibly producing I guess at some point, if that. If I were able to, I’d like to get into that, sure.
Joining Jonah Hex

Megan Fox and Josh BrolinSheKnows: What most appealed to you about participating in the world of Jonah Hex?

Megan Fox: I felt like it was an amazing opportunity for me to be involved in a project with Josh, and John Malkovich, and (Michael) Fassbender -- with all these incredible actors, who were coming in to make this movie, and I just wanted to be a part of it any way that I could.

SheKnows: Your character is a hooker, but not the typical hooker muse with a heart of gold…

Megan Fox: I don’t really feel like she’s that stereotypical. Perhaps you’re responding to the fact that I’m playing the character, that that sort of makes it stereotypical. But it’s something completely different from anything I’ve done and no one can accuse me of doing the same thing twice, which I’m proud of.

SheKnows: And what’s next for Megan Fox, other than marriage to Brian Austin Green…so we hear?

Megan Fox: I have a movie with Mickey Rourke hopefully coming out this fall called Passion Play, which I was really excited to work on. It’s an independent right now, and I’m really proud of that and I had an amazing experience making that movie. It’s sort of a modern film noir, and Mickey’s character is a down on his luck trumpet player and is a heroin addict, and he comes across my character, who is part of a traveling freak show. She has bird wings that sprouted out of her back when she went through puberty, and it’s sort of this very bizarre strange relationship that they have and it’s very tragic.

http://moviemikes.com/2010/06/interview-with-billy-blair/



Interview with Billy Blair

June 16, 2010 by Mike Gencarelli
Filed under Interviews

Billy Blair is co-starring in two of this years most exciting action films, “Jonah Hex” and “Machete”. Besides acting Billy is also involved with music and is currently working with two bands. Movie Mikes had a chance to talk to Billy to discuss his upcoming roles and his love for movies.

Mike Gencarelli: Tell me about your role in “Jonah Hex”?
Billy Blair: I am one of Turnbull’s gang members, played by John Malkovich. I am pretty much side by side with Michael Fassbender in the film. Michael is the nicest guy and really talented. So, pretty much that is my role I am a gang member.

Mike Gencarelli: What was it like working on the set, any cool stories?
Billy Blair: Yeah I got a good one. During the shoot, Malkovich is a method actor, so he was in character the whole time. As far as everyone else, they are all on queue and really nice. Josh Brolin and I kinda hit it off. Brolin was walking to the set and passed me and some stunt guys while getting ready to do this dynamite scene. So he walks by and farts really loud and I turned to him and said “Hey! Is that the dynamite for the scene” and he started laughing and he was way cool. I didn’t get to see Megan Fox though, since originally she didn’t have a big part until the re-shoots. They shot her scenes a week prior to me showing up. Maybe I will get to see her though in “Jonah Hex 2″.

Mike Gencarelli: You also are in the upcoming “Machete”, tell us about your role as Von’s Henchmen?
Billy Blair: Oh yeah! Von is played by Don Johnson and I am his henchmen in the movie. I thank Robert Rodriguez because during the re-shoots he gave me a bigger part. I got a lot of action in this film. Don Johnson was way cool. It surprised me a lot that because people already knew me by name when I walked on set, but then again my character’s name was Billy [laughs]. Here is a funny story both characters in “Machete” and “Jonah Hex” my name is Billy. I said, “Wow, I am playing myself twice”.

MG: That shoot must have been a lot of fun right?
BB: I loved working on this movie. Rodriguez is such a kind and generous guy. He never shows a sweat. He is smooth all the way, totally professional. Every actor has a wish to work with one director and that was my wish man! It was unbelievable. It was shot in Austin, Texas and it so was HOT!

MG: Were you familiar with the “Grindhouse” fake trailer before you worked on this?
BB: When my agent submitted me, I became more aware of it. I said maybe I need to watch this trailer real quick. I had to do my homework catch up and see what it was all about. I really dug it and I am happy to be about of the movie.

MG: Did you always want to become an actor?
BB: Well, I started off as a musician. In the mid 90’s I wanted to get into acting. I went to college here in Texas for theater and drama. After that I just started picking up independent films. I almost stopped acting though because my agent at the time was horrible and kept screwing me. I focused on my music instead but in 2008, I got a call from my agent, Joseph Chavez, and he sent me off on an audition. At first I didn’t take it seriously but I went for it anyway. The audition was a Joe’s Crab Shack commercial and sure enough I got it and it is nationwide man!! It is on YouTube, I play a devil. After that I got “I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell”, “Jonah Hex”, “Mongolian Death Worm”, and “Machete”. It is like a snowball effect. Now I am back into acting and I love it.

MG: What does the future hold in store for you?
BB: I am just waiting on some projects I have been submitted for but I am not sure if I should say the name. Well I can say that it is a pirate movie and I am just waiting at this point. I also play in a band and I am always touring. The band is called Messer. I actually also have another band I am working with called also White Collar Ghetto. Messer is a mainstream hard rock and White Collar Ghetto is more heavier. You can check them both out on Myspace. So that is what I am doing now.

Click here to check out Billy’s bands, Messer and White Collar Ghetto

http://www.thefancarpet.com/NewsPage.aspx?n_id=1318

Megan Fox is Obsessed with 'The Lord Of The Rings'
June 21 2010

Hollywood stunner Megan Fox has revealed that she is obsessed with 'The Lord Of The Rings'. Speaking at a recent press conference for her new film 'Jonah Hex', the "closet nerd" displayed some impressive Lord Of The Rings trivia “I’m a Lord of the Rings fan. I’ll go on the forums, fans complain that Frodo is eating the Lembas bread outside of Mordor instead of at the Mines of Moria. And they get really mad. You cannot focus completely on pleasing them because you'll never win. They'll never be happy no matter what you do, Peter Jackson and company won like 30-something Oscars for those movies.”

When speaking about her film role choices she said “I just felt that it was an amazing opportunity for me to be involved in a project with Josh and John Malkovich and Michael Fassbender, all these incredible actors who were coming in to make this movie,” she recalls. “I just wanted to be a part of it any way that I could.”

Holed up at the Four Seasons Hotel – one of Beverly Hill's most popular and lavish superstar haunts – to promote the release of Jonah Hex, the press gathered around Fox while she discussed her feelings towards fame, what keeps her grounded and sane, how physically demanding her scenes in Jonah Hex turned out to be, Frodo's eating habits and she explains her excitement over her next film in which she plays a performer in a freak show. “I like to take chances,” she says with a grin. “That's the only way I'll grow as an actress.”

Based on the comic books and graphic novels released by DC Comics, in Jonah Hex, Lilah has a soft spot in her hooker heart for the facially-disfigured Hex (Josh Brolin) – a bounty hunter and drifter who has the very scary ability to raise people from the dead. While Jonah Hex has only been a modestly successful comic book series.

http://www.canada.com/metamorphosis+Megan/3182489/story.html

The metamorphosis of Megan

Fox `full of candy canes and lollipops' this time around.

By Bob Thompson, Canwest News Service June 21, 2010

LOS ANGELES - Think of her as a transforming starlet. Megan Fox used to let her words get in the way of more honourable intentions, and she paid the price.

Last summer, the 24-year-old was trying to explain that her part in the Michael Bay-directed Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was more about the action and less about her acting when the self-deprecating whisper in a magazine became a Hollywood scream of discontent.

An offended Bay responded by not hiring Fox for the third Transformers blockbuster currently in production.

What does she have to say for herself now? Not much unless you admire her newly developed diplomatic way of avoiding another war of words when she's asked about retribution.

"I'm all full of candy canes and lollipops," says Fox during a recent interview for the revenge film Jonah Hex. "I don't even know what that means (retribution)."

That was her quasi-no-comment response to a question about payback as it relates to Jonah Hex and, passively, her squabble with Bay.

So much for headline fodder, although she's specific about playing a Wild West prostitute with a heart of ice in Jonah Hex, which opened on the weekend to a modest box office of $5.1 million US.

In the film of the comic book series, Josh Brolin portrays Hex, a violent supernatural bounty hunter in the post-Civil War ol' west who has a bizarre past and a strange relationship with his only friend, Lilah, (Fox), a hooker who can give as good as she gets.

Facing imprisonment, the scarred gunslinger accepts a mission to hunt a former enemy and Confederate colonel (John Malkovich) developing an apocalypse bomb to be used against the "north" who defeated him in the war.

Complications develop, of course, when the colonel and his murderous Irish henchman (Michael Fassbender) kidnap Lilah to force Hex's hand in the inevitable showdown.

Forget about the damsel in distress thing. Fox's Lilah ends up alongside Brolin's Hex when the shoot 'em up starts, which was a major plus for the actress.

"Well, I mean hooker with a heart of gold was not in the character breakdown when I got it," says Fox. "And I felt that it was an amazing opportunity for me to be involved in a project with Josh (Brolin) and John Malkovich and (Michael) Fassbender.''

Certainly, there was no hesitation of hiring Fox on Brolin's part. The actor had a say in casting and now he can't say enough about her.

"When we met," says Brolin of Fox, "I just wanted to make sure that she was the real deal, and a scrapper, and that she could go head-to-head with John (Malkovich) and hold her own."

The verdict then and now? "She's definitely got a truck driver mentality," he says.

While Brolin as Hex does the majority of the action, Fox's Lilah had a few moments near the climax when she brandishes six guns like a Wild West pro. The movements didn't come easily to her.

"One gunfight scene had stunts that they'd been choreographing for I think a couple of weeks when I showed up," she recalls. "I had minutes to get it down, and it was really difficult for me to shoot the old style gunslinger guns because I have tiny little baby hands."

Everything came together, however. So did the Lilah corset wearing, which Fox insists wasn't nearly as uncomfortable as it might seem.

"When I showed up for camera tests everyone was horrified," Fox insists. "They thought that I was in pain or that I was hurting or that something was wrong with me because my waist was so small. But I enjoyed it, and I wish that they'd come back into style."

What she's not looking forward to is the carping by comic book fans. She predicts some Jonah Hex fans will take exception to the film's liberties.

Fox has signed on to star in Fathom, another comic book adaptation. She'll be featured as the sexy underwater superhero Aspen Matthews.

And then there's Passion Play, an odd independent film (tentatively set for a fall release) in which she plays opposite Mickey Rourke.

"Mickey's character is a trumpet player, a down-on-his-luck heroin addict who comes across my character, part of a travelling freak show," reports the actress. "She has bird wings that sprouted out of her back when she went through puberty. It's a very bizarre and tragic relationship."

That's not really poster-girl material, but Fox maintains she's not in the acting game to be popular or famous.

"I distance myself from the Hollywood crowd," she contends. "I don't really go out and socialize that way. I'm sort of oddly, very domestic, and I think that keeps me sane."

It probably helped her cope during the Transformers back-and-forth, too.

"You have to be a strong person to survive it (fame)," says Fox.

"And it is very difficult to be under the microscope every moment of everyday and have everything that leaves your mouth become a sensationalized news story, no matter what your intentions were when you first said it."

http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/metamorphosis+Megan/3185908/story.html

The metamorphosis of Megan Fox

By Bob Thompson, Canwest News Service June 22, 2010

LOS ANGELES - Think of her as a transforming starlet. Megan Fox used to let her words get in the way of more honourable intentions, and she paid the price.

Last summer, the 24-year-old was trying to explain that her part in the Michael Bay-directed Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was more about the action and less about her acting when the self-deprecating whisper in a magazine became a Hollywood scream of discontent.

An offended Bay responded by not hiring Fox for the third Transformers blockbuster currently in production.

What does she have to say for herself now? Not much unless you admire her newly developed diplomatic way of avoiding another war of words when she's asked about retribution.

"I'm all full of candy canes and lollipops," says Fox during a recent interview for the revenge film Jonah Hex. "I don't even know what that means (retribution)."

That was her quasi-no-comment response to a question about payback as it relates to Jonah Hex and, passively, her squabble with Bay.

So much for headline fodder, although she's specific about playing a Wild West prostitute with a heart of ice in Jonah Hex, which opened on the weekend to a modest box office of $5.1 million US.

In the film of the comic book series, Josh Brolin portrays Hex, a violent supernatural bounty hunter in the post-Civil War ol' west who has a bizarre past and a strange relationship with his only friend, Lilah, (Fox), a hooker who can give as good as she gets.

Facing imprisonment, the scarred gunslinger accepts a mission to hunt a former enemy and Confederate colonel (John Malkovich) developing an apocalypse bomb to be used against the "north" who defeated him in the war.

Complications develop, of course, when the colonel and his murderous Irish henchman (Michael Fassbender) kidnap Lilah to force Hex's hand in the inevitable showdown.

Forget about the damsel in distress thing. Fox's Lilah ends up alongside Brolin's Hex when the shoot 'em up starts, which was a major plus for the actress.

"Well, I mean hooker with a heart of gold was not in the character breakdown when I got it," says Fox. "And I felt that it was an amazing opportunity for me to be involved in a project with Josh (Brolin) and John Malkovich and (Michael) Fassbender."

Certainly, there was no hesitation of hiring Fox on Brolin's part. The actor had a say in casting and now he can't say enough about her.

"When we met," says Brolin of Fox, "I just wanted to make sure that she was the real deal, and a scrapper, and that she could go head-to-head with John (Malkovich) and hold her own."

The verdict then and now? "She's definitely got a truck driver mentality," he says.

While Brolin as Hex does the majority of the action, Fox's Lilah had a few moments near the climax when she brandishes six guns like a Wild West pro. The movements didn't come easily to her.

"One gunfight scene had stunts that they'd been choreographing for I think a couple of weeks when I showed up," she recalls. "I had minutes to get it down, and it was really difficult for me to shoot the old style gunslinger guns because I have tiny little baby hands."

Everything came together, however. So did the Lilah corset wearing, which Fox insists wasn't nearly as uncomfortable as it might seem.

"When I showed up for camera tests everyone was horrified," Fox insists. "They thought that I was in pain or that I was hurting or that something was wrong with me because my waist was so small. But I enjoyed it, and I wish that they'd come back into style."

What she's not looking forward to is the carping by comic book fans. She predicts some Jonah Hex fans will take exception to the film's liberties.

Fox has signed on to star in Fathom, another comic book adaptation. She'll be featured as the sexy underwater superhero Aspen Matthews.

And then there's Passion Play, an odd independent film (tentatively set for a fall release) in which she plays opposite Mickey Rourke.

"Mickey's character is a trumpet player, a down-on-his-luck heroin addict who comes across my character, part of a travelling freak show," reports the actress. "She has bird wings that sprouted out of her back when she went through puberty. It's a very bizarre and tragic relationship."

That's not really poster-girl material, but Fox maintains she's not in the acting game to be popular or famous.

"I distance myself from the Hollywood crowd," she contends. "I don't really go out and socialize that way. I'm sort of oddly, very domestic, and I think that keeps me sane."

It probably helped her cope during the Transformers back-and-forth, too.

"You have to be a strong person to survive it (fame)," says Fox.

"And it is very difficult to be under the microscope every moment of everyday and have everything that leaves your mouth become a sensationalized news story, no matter what your intentions were when you first said it."