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| Barton focused on chasing her passion
Mischa Barton leans in as she sips from a Starbucks cup, her hair hanging loosely to past her shoulders.
Barton is sitting in a darkened Regina soundstage, relaxed in a long, dark grey wool sweater and black jeans.
“I really like it here,” she said as she crosses her legs.
“Here” is Regina in minus-25 degree weather with several centimetres of snow on the ground — Barton’s home for six weeks as she filmed her latest movie, Walled In, a movie adaptation of the novel Les Emmures by French writer Serge Brussolo.
“I have taken a couple of drives out and made it out as far as Moose Jaw and places like that,” Barton said of her activities while in the Queen City.
“I really haven’t had much time off, only on the weekends and that’s really when I tried to relax, so things like getting massages and going to the spa have been about as adventurous as I get. It’s been a heavy filming schedule for me.”
Shooting for Walled In, which wrapped in the first week of December, was momentous for Barton — the film will be the first in which she will carry the movie in a leading role.
In the movie, Barton plays Sam, a demolition expert overseeing the destruction of a building inhabited by souls of people buried in the walls by the structure’s architect.
“She’s intense and tiring,” Barton said. “She was in my head. It really felt like I lived her because I’m almost in every scene. So it’s really been my film and I’ve had to live it and experience it.”
Subsequently, Barton chose to perform all her own stunts, which included rigging, jumping and climbing.
“You name it, I’ve been training,” Barton said with a laugh. “(Sam’s) really quite wiry and intense. She burns off a lot of energy, she’s quite a nervous person, she’s always dealing with something.”
Not normally an avid fan of scary movies (though she admits to enjoying psychological thrillers like Silence of the Lambs), Barton was drawn to the role because of the “the smartly written script” which was adapted to the screen by French director Gilles Paquet-Brenner.
“When I read the script, I really thought it had so much depth and it was just so interesting,” Barton said. “I figured if I would go see it, then I would love to do it.”
Barton, who jets between her homes in New York and Los Angeles between movie roles, has perused many scripts in her time.
Until 2006, the actress was known as Marissa Cooper on the popular television series The O.C., earning her legions of fans and some Hollywood fame.
Since then, Barton has gone on to film a handful of movies that include a role in an upcoming Bruce Willis flick called Assassination of a High School President.
For the present time, Barton says she is “just feeling it out as I go along.”
“I think really that for me right now the best thing, the thing that would make me the most happy is to work with people where I get to push myself and experience new things,” she said.
“I want to be making good films. It’s my passion.”
Source: Pressdisplay
It’s a methodology that works
Gilles Paquet-Brenner, director of Walled In, lets out a laugh when he hears his methodology described by actress Mischa Barton.
Barton mused that PaquetBrenner’s direction in the Saskatchewan-filmed movie — a psychological thriller that centres on a demolition expert who must deal with spiritual and psychological demons when tasked with overseeing the demolition of a haunted building — had an “artistic French way” about it.
“I love that,” Paquet-Brenner said. “It’s natural to me.”
After all, the movie, with roots in 1970s horror films, is PaquetBrenner’s directorial debut outside of France.
“Let’s say I’m more jazz and the people here are more rock and roll,” he said of the cultural differences. “But once things were said and we understood each other, I didn’t see that much of a difference — we were doing the same job. The differences make things richer.”
On the set, Paquet-Brenner adopted an unconventional directorial style that was a departure from North American norms and sensibilities.
“Maybe in America, they’re more plot-driven and maybe in Europe we’re more character-driven,” PaquetBrenner said.
“I’m not a preparation freak. I like to react to what’s on the set, what’s happening. To me, the actors drive the show and I react to what the actors show me. It’s a really collective work.”
And for some of the film’s actors, the driving was more literal than figurative.
Cameron Bright, the 14-year-old who acted opposite Nicole Kidman in 2006’s Birth, reveled in the fact that one of the first things he did on the set was drive a truck, a skill he had to learn on the spot.
“And of course they had me drive it down a hill,” Bright said with a laugh. “They’re like, ‘Oh, and watch out for the camera and 30people.’ ”
In the film, Bright plays a loner who lives in the haunted building with his caretaker father. Though his character was a dark one, there were some perks that sold Bright on the role.
“Kidnapping Mischa Barton!” Bright said with a mischievous smile creeping across his face. “I thought that would be cool.”
Paquet-Brenner who has a reputation in France for making psychological dramas and actioncomedies — he won an award at the Deauville Film Festival in 2001 for the drama Les Jolies Choses — was grateful for the opportunity to break outside of his sphere.
“What I like about horror movies is they deal with very powerful feelings like death and fear,” he said. “So it’s very nice material to work with as a director. The shooting was very intense. There was electricity on the set.”
And Saskatchewan, he said, was an ideal place to watch his vision come to fruition.
“Saskatchewan was really perfect,” he reflected. “All the locations, they’re gorgeous. They have this lonely feeling that we needed for the movie. And plus, I saw here, people that were really good at what they did.
“I would come back in a second.”
Source: Pressdisplay __________________ Icon: Sam
Mischa Barton and Nico Tortorella
Last edited by maalibu : 12-13-2007 at 03:54 AM.
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