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March 19, 2000 - The New York Times
Michael Kaplan, the costume designer, is somewhat amused. "I'm flattered," he says with a laugh. "But, hey, where's my cut?" He is responding to a report from Milan in The New York Times that Donatella Versace's fall men's collection was inspired by the spirit of "Fight Club," a movie whose clothes he created. One might well imagine a runway strewn, as the film was, with junked cars, broken glass and pools of motor oil in which models bloody one another with fists, elbows and boots, with the resulting globs of effluvia spattering the front row. During the course of his career, Kaplan has dressed some of the coolest heavyweights in the business, including Brad Pitt and Edward Norton in "Fight Club," Morgan Freeman in "Seven," Harrison Ford and Rutger Hauer in "Blade Runner," Sean Penn and Michael Douglas in "The Game" and Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck in "Armageddon." He has also had assignments he would probably rather forget, like "Can't Stop the Music," an Allan Carr glitz-fest that featured the Village People. A native of Philadelphia, Kaplan studied sculpture and drawing at the Philadelphia College of Art before leaving for Hollywood. He got his first break there as an assistant on "The Sonny and Cher Show" -- "the one they did after they divorceed," he notes. Kaplan then crossed over to movies and went on to design the costumes for close to 30 features. His best efforts over the years seem to have resonated not only with the fashion-conscious public, but also with Hollywood's most visionary filmmakers, who often choose to work with him. David Fincher, the director of "Fight Club," has called on Kaplan to create the costumes for many of his projects. "I want to work with people who understand how their work fits into the whole," Fincher says. "Michael comes up with a reason as to why people wear what they wear. He has a back story. And an initial concept. That's the thing I respect most about him. He helps me do my job rather than worry whether he's going to get an Oscar nomination." Kaplan sees his mandate as a simple one. "My job is to help the actor create a character," he says. For Norton, the disillusioned yuppie of "Fight Club," he chose drab, conservative duds. To establish Pitt's pugilistic and penniless Tyler Durden, Kaplan scoured countless thrift shops for the right jacket, pants and shirts. "I had to find stuff that Tyler would have bought," Kaplan explains, "and because he was a squatter with no money, that meant thrift shops. I was obsessed with shopping for this character." Finally, inspired by what he found at the thrift shops, Kaplan -- along with Pitt and Fincher -- settled on a distressed red leather jacket, camouflage pants, printed T-shirts and a faux muskrat coat for Tyler. "He is a little off-balance," Kaplan suggests. "In his mind, everything he's wearing, from his pants to his toucan-print shirts, is camouflage." The designer then created his own ersatz collection: multiple versions of each outfit. It's a common practice, he says: "Hey, everything was gonna get trashed; we couldn't afford to run out." Although Kaplan himself is a clothes-conscious guy, he notes, "I don't really follow fashion when I'm working." However, many of the young actors he dresses do -- to a fault. "They've become label freaks," Kaplan observes. "It's all 'Gucci this' and 'Prada that,' and they worry too much about how they're going to look while they're working. But the best actors I know are anything but vain. Brad Pitt is probably the least vain person I've ever worked with. A lot of people would say, 'Why would he be?' or, 'How could he ever look ugly?' But many really beautiful people are afraid of screwing it up. They think that's all they have to offer us." Kaplan's latest movie, the contemporary romantic comedy "Keeping the Faith," starring Ben Stiller as a Manhattan rabbi, Edward Norton as a priest and Jenna Elfman as the woman they both love, may or may not generate the kind of fashion interest spawned by "Flashdance," "Blade Runner" and "Fight Club." After all, how fascinating can you get, clothing men of the cloth? Yet Kaplan tries to delineate each man through the contents of his closet. "Ed's character isn't supposed to be interested in attracting women, whereas Ben's is still very much on the market," he points out. For that reason, he gave Norton a wardrobe that was serviceable yet lackluster, while he dressed Stiller as more of a peacock, clothing him in snazzy turtlenecks and leather jackets. |
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March 17, 2000
Beverly Hills, CA - Edward Norton has been set to present at the 72nd Academy Awards®, producers Richard D. and Lili Fini Zanuck announced today. This will be his first time as a presenter. Nominated for an Academy Award® for his performances in "American History X" in 1998 and "Primal Fear" in 1996, Norton's other film credits include "Everyone Says I Love You," "The People vs. Larry Flynt," "Rounders" and "Fight Club." He produced, directed and stars in "Keeping the Faith," which opens next month. Norton is on the board of New York Signature Theater Company, with whom he first performed in the stage production of "Fragments." Academy Awards® for outstanding film achievements of 1999 will be presented on March 26, 2000, at the Los Angeles Shrine Auditorium. Sunday at the Oscars® will be televised live by the ABC Television Network beginning at 5:00 p.m. (PST), with a half-hour red carpet arrivals segment preceding the presentation ceremony. |
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March 9, 2000 - Montreal Gazette
A dream team of Hollywood actors is heading to Montreal to star in a $70-million crime thriller. The Score, which will shoot in town from May to mid-August, will feature the heavy-weight trio of Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, and Edward Norton in the lead roles. Producer Gary Foster confirmed yesterday that the three stars - long rumoured to be circling the film - have signed-on for the much-anticipated project. Oscar-winning actors Brando and De Niro are teaming up onscreen for the first time in their storied careers. The Tinseltown legends will be joined by Norton, one of this generation's hottest actors thanks to critically acclaimed roles in the films Primal Fear, The People Vs. Larry Flynt, American History X, and Fight Club. "We have three generations of top actors here," Foster said. "Bob De Niro and Marlon Brando have never worked together, so they're excited, and for Edward Norton, who's the young lion, he gets to work with his idols. It's not just a paycheque for them. It's a big deal." The Score is to be directed by Frank Oz, whose credits include last year's Steve Martin comedy Bowfinger, In & Out, What About Bob?, and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Foster, who has been developing the project for the past three years, also produced Sleepless in Seattle, Tin Cup and Just Cause. The Score, written by Dan Taylor and Kario Salem, tells the tale of an aging master thief (De Niro) who is coaxed into pulling off one last heist by a young criminal (Norton). Brando plays De Niro's fence/mentor. De Niro's character is an American living in Montreal, though he does most his jobs back in the U.S. In contrast to most visiting Hollywood productions, The Score is set in Montreal and will not use the city as a stand-in for another North American burgh. "We liked the sense that it was a North American city with European roots," Foster said. "We're going to utilize every aspect of the city. The picture was originally conceived to be shot in San Francisco and then we said: 'It's been done so many times. Why not Montreal?' There's not a shot outside of Montreal. We're happy to shoot Montreal as Montreal. We're going to make the city shine." This is the first time Brando and De Niro will be working on the same film set. Though they both played the role of Vito Corleone in The Godfather epics, they worked on separate films. Brando portrayed the title character in the original, with De Niro playing the young Corleone in The Godfather: Part II. It is the only time in Oscar history that two actors won Academy Awards for playing the same character. The Score is a production of Mandalay Pictures, a Hollywood studio partly owned by Vancouver-based company Lions Gate Entertainment, and it will be released across North America early next year by Paramount Pictures. |
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February 25, 2000 - Hollywood/Variety
UGC Intl. is lifting "The Painted Veil'' The 3-year-old Paris-based production and sales outfit has committed to Gillian Armstrong's $35 million project -- among its most expensive since the company was reformed in 1997. Nicole Kidman and Edward Norton will topline the movie, set to begin lensing in the fall, based on a script by Academy Award-winning scribe Ron Nyswaner (Philadelphia). Pic will be produced with Jean-Francois Fonlupt’s Emotion Pictures and Sara Colleton. Fonlupt recently produced the Nick Nolte-Sharon Stone starrer Simpatico with Le Studio Canal Plus. Story begins in London in 1922 with Kidman’s Kitty Garstin marrying a buttoned-up scientist (Norton) in order to escape the constraints of her family. The couple move to Hong Kong, where Kitty begins an affair with the local playboy. When her husband learns of the peccadillo, he takes her to a remote village where she begins a journey of self-discovery. The notoriously press-shy UGC wasn’t commenting, but a sale to a U.S. major looks imminent, and it is known that a sale to Japan has been finalized. Prior to Painted Veil, UGC’s biggest English-lingo outing was as sales agent for the $35 million Tim Robbins-directed Cradle Will Rock, which the company handled for Touchstone Pictures. |
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February 8, 2000 - Dallas/PRNewswire
Nominees for the Sixth Annual Blockbuster Entertainment Awards scheduled to air in June on FOX were announced today. The star-studded event, which honors the lead and supporting actors and actresses in top performing movies in 1999, as well as music artists based on the top-selling albums for 1999, will be broadcast live from the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. Edward Norton, together with Brad Pitt, received a nomination in the category Favorite Action Team. Other nominations went to Will Smith & Kevin Kline for Wild Wild West, Mark Wahlberg, George Clooney & Ice Cube for Three Kings. Blockbuster Inc. is a publicly traded subsidiary of Viacom Inc. and is the world's leading renter of videos and video games with approximately 6,900 stores in the United States, its territories and 26 other countries. |
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February 3, 2000 - Hollywood/Variety
Kevin Spacey starrer "The Big Kahuna'' will kick off the 15th annual Santa Barbara Intl. Film Festival (March 2-12), which has packed 20 world and 16 U.S. premieres in its screening lineup. Anthony Hopkins, currently toplining "Titus,'' will be feted with the festival's Modern Master award, with Edward Norton hosting the ceremonies. Hopkins will pick up his honor March 4 inside Santa Barbara's Arlington Theater. For fest passes and a complete schedule of events call, (805) 963-4408 or log on to www.sbfilmfestival.org. |
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January 31, 2000 - Los Angeles/Reuters
Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro both won Oscars more than 25 years ago for separate portrayals of mob patriarch Vito Corleone in "The Godfather" saga, but the two actors may soon be co-starring in a film for the first time. Brando is currently negotiating to appear with De Niro and Edward Norton in the upcoming crime drama "The Score" for Paramount Pictures, a spokesman for Brando at Creative Artists Agency said Monday. The possible pairing of the two legendary actors was first reported Monday in the entertainment trade paper Daily Variety. De Niro and Norton already have signed on to the picture, their representatives said. The movie, to be directed by Frank Oz ("Bowfinger," "In & Out,"), is about a young criminal, Norton, who thwarts the retirement plans of a master thief played by De Niro by blackmailing him into pulling off one last heist, Variety said. Brando would play the veteran thief's fence and mentor. Brando's last appearance in theaters was in the 1997 drama "The Brave," directed by and starring Johnny Depp. De Niro was last seen as a stroke victim in last year's drama "Flawless," directed by Joel Schumacher. And Norton's most recent film role was in "Fight Club. Variety said "The Score" is being produced by Mandalay Pictures with filming slated to start in late April in Montreal. The fees of De Niro and Norton already have driven up the project's cost, and producers are trying to work out numbers that will allow them to bring Brando on board, Variety said.
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January 13, 2000
Add Edward Norton to the stampede of Hollywood hotshots scrambling to get a biopic of eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes on the big screen. Variety reports that Norton has talked about teaming up with Milos Forman and writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, the writing and directing team that lensed bios of Andy Kaufman and Larry Flynt. If they do want their film on the life of the aviator, movie-director, playboy, industrialist and recluse to get made, they better work fast, because there's plenty of competition. Alexander told Variety the idea of a film with Norton and Forman has been pitched to them, but they are working on a Marx Brothers bio and he conceded he's afraid of the competition, particularly Mann and DiCaprio's entry. "As writers, the problem is we'd have to spend the year working hard before finding out the project across the street has gotten a greenlight and we've wasted our time," Karaszewski told Variety. "With both Andy Kaufman and Larry Flynt, we knew we were the only ones". |
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November 18, 1999 - CDnow Online
More than 300 musicians, actors, and other celebrities, including Moby, Courtney Love, Mark McGrath of Sugar Ray, Leonard Cohen, and Pearl Jam's Stone Gossard, are contributing to a new book of favorite albums to be released early next year. The book, called Star Tunes: The Celebrity Top Ten Album List Book, is being compiled by Los Angeles musicologist Michael Friedman, and also includes entries from Alice Cooper, Slash, Flea of Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nick Hexum of 311, Elliott Smith, Melissa Auf der Maur of Smashing Pumpkins, Steven Page of Barenaked Ladies, and Joe Strummer of the Clash. Plus Ed Norton, Rick Davies of Supertramp, Drew Barrymore, Thomas Dolby, Fabio, Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters, Kato Kaelin, and Winona Ryder, whose list includes records by Tom Waits, Fairground Attraction, U2 and Wilco. |
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October 13, 1999
Fight Club star Edward Norton will add another unconventional role to his growing list of chameleon-like character changes. After playing a pumped up neo-Nazi skinhead, a faux-schizophrenic murderer, and a lowlife gambler, Norton has signed to Motherless Brooklyn, about a detective suffering from Tourette's Syndrome who must solve the murder of his mentor. Since the syndrome results in tics, twitches, bizarre speech patterns, and uncontrollable behavior - such as "reaching, tapping, grabbing,, and kissing urges" - that's quite an obstacle for main character Lionel Essrog, AKA "Freakshow," to overcome. "It's really powerful - a great vehicle for Edward," New Line senior VP Brian Witten tells Variety. "It's a complex and interesting character, a damaged character, and that's the thing that's holding him back from achieving his accomplishments." Norton has always said that Dustin Hoffman is his idol for taking on unconventional roles, and this kind of afflicted character sounds every inch Rain Man Oscar bait. The Academy loves these struggling-with-an-illness roles, rewarding Hoffman as Rain Man, Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot, and Geoffrey Rush in Shine. The still new-on-the-scene actor has already been nominated as Best Supporting Actor for his 1996 feature debut in Primal Fear and Best Actor for his repentant skinhead in American History X. A script is still in the works. Norton will also produce the film, which is based on the novel by Jonathan Lethem, which Kirkus Reviews calls "A brilliantly imagined riff on the classic detective tale." Norton's currently in post-production on his directorial debut, Faith, a romantic comedy in which he and Ben Stiller both fall in love with Jenna Elfman.
On edge
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October 13, 1999
You won't get to see the most controversial scene from Fight Club, the edgy, ultra-violent fantasy that teams Brad Pitt and Edward Norton as founders of an underground neo-fascist movement. What could be more offensive than the film's already notorious bloody fights, antiestablishment tone, and darkness of its character's souls? A line about a woman wanting an abortion. As Chuck Palahniuk, whose debut novel is the basis for David Fincher's R-rated film, explains, "There was a line from the book where Helena [Bonham Carter] says [to Brad Pitt], 'I want to have your abortion.' It was on the birthday cake they had on the set and everything. David fought so hard to keep it in the film, but even Brad asked David to take that line out. He said, 'My mother is going to see this!' So he changed it to, 'I haven't been f--ked like this since grade school.'" While the ratings board didn't have to censor that particular scene, a shot of male genitalia might have been cause enough for an NC-17 rating. But since it's a photo that's being flashed, it apparently was passed. So far no one involved in making the film has claimed that sizable equipment as their own cameo. "The rumor I heard," says Palahniuk, "was it had to have very dark pubic hair so nobody would think it was Brad's." Althought Palahniuk didn't adapt his own novel for the screen — Jim Uhls did screenplay honors — the author's doing press interviews for the film and was even welcomed on the set. Look for more Palahniuk film projects soon; he's sold his second novel, Survivors, to the movies and is on a book tour for his third, Invincible Monster. Palahniuk was originally moved to write the bestselling Fight Club by what he saw around him: "I wanted to acknowledge what my friends were complaining about, being failed by their fathers, and document what's going on in our lives." The novelist has repeatedly laughed off the notion that his imaginary fight clubs really exist — despite persistent reports to the contrary in the media. "I created the idea of a fight club and it's been a pain in the ass ever since," he says, hardly pained but smiling. "Editors call, even TV people, and they say, 'We want to send a journalist to the fight club in our area. Where do they meet?' I say, 'I made it up,' and they say, 'We realize it's a secret. You can tell us.' They think I'm hiding it." Ironically, Palahniuk partly intended Fight Club as an anti-cult cautionary tale, a sort of reminder that Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy could happen again. "So many people are desperate for a cause larger than themselves," he says. "I'm nervous over what will crop up to fulfill that need. It breaks my heart, because I sense it's something people want to express. If it's sexy enough, people will rush to it — and I wanted to make that clear. It's an anti-fascist cautionary tale. I say, Go to a Pentecostal church revival and throw yourself on the floor or a mosh pit." As for the casting, Palahniuk, who visited the set for several days, compared Pitt's Tyler to one of Hollywood's unsung heroes of yesteryear. "Remember how Bruce Dern was the charismatic psycho of the '60s? Those are the points Brad excels at, the good-looking psychotic. Brad's got a real intense energy and always up for things, for golfing and playing games. Little kid energy sort of." As for the film's vaunted homoerotic content, which plays with but never brings Pitt and Norton into each other's arms except for another pummeling, Palahniuk concedes he knew what he was doing. "On some level I'm playing with that and it was always fun to see how people would be relieved when they [discovered as the book progressed the two guys] weren't in love with each other. 'Thank God it wasn't homo!' Narcissistic is so much better." But Palahniuk says that director Fincher intentionally emphasized scenes like the one where Pitt's Tyler puts a gun barrel down the narrator's mouth. "David played it up for effect. One time he laughed and said, 'This is most homo movie ever! Even more than that vampire movie [Interview With the Vampire which also starred Pitt],'" says Palahniuk. |
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