ARTHUR NEWMAN Hollywood Junket Interviews By Courtney Vaudreuil
We had the chance to attend the Hollywood junket for Arthur Newman. I want to Thank Courtney for covering this for our site.
Expect a movie review and more to come from Courtney in the future.
Wallace Avery is suffering from a middle aged malaise. Despite having a steady job, nice apartment, beautiful girlfriend, and young son, Avery is unable to move past his unsuccessful attempt at a pro golfing career. Desperate to start over and abandon his past shortcomings, Avery leaves everything behind and becomes a new man, Arthur Newman. Directed by Dante Ariola and starring Oscar® winner Colin Firth and Emily Blunt, the eponymously titled film ARTHUR NEWMAN explores whether one can ever truly start over and, more importantly, the consequences of living a purely selfish life.
ARTHUR NEWMAN premiered at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival and is the feature film debut of director Ariola, who has had a successful career directing commercials for some of the world’s largest and well-known brands, such as Adidas and Nike. ARTHUR NEWMAN is the opposite of a quick pitch; it is a meandering quest for self-acceptance that brings together Arthur (Firth) and a troubled young woman named Mike (Blunt). This extreme contrast was a deliberate choice made by Ariola: “Working in that [commercials] medium, which I love, made me want to focus on something that was all character and story, with the bells and whistles taken out.”
Ariola was extremely fortunate to secure some of Hollywood’s top talent for his project. Over the last couple years, both Firth and Blunt have successfully moved between independent film projects and big budget Hollywood flicks. Their ability to completely disappear into their on-screen personas reinforces the credibility of the story and dispels any concerns of the age difference between the actors. “When Colin was doing romantic comedies earlier in his career, there was always something true about them, even though they were these (frothy confections),” Ariola explained. “In terms of Emily, she’s such a chameleon in the role. It was like discovering someone you hadn’t seen in a movie before.” In other words, Ariola hit the jackpot.
How did Ariola manage to lure in such A-list talent? Through the words of writer Becky Johnston, who actually wrote the screenplay 20 years ago. Johnston returned to freshen up the script that still has some remnants of 1980s story-telling. For example, the film was written before the prevalence of the internet, and in today’s world, Arthur would have a harder time hiding his identity under the ever present eye of Google. Johnston reflected, “We’re living in different times, certainly more honest ones.” Nevertheless, Johnston believes people crave an unconventional romance, like that between Arthur and Mike: “Nobody believes in the depiction of love as it operated in the romantic comedies of the past – filmmakers are also getting tired of that ‘sweet template.’”
The script is ultimately what brought Firth and Blunt onboard. “It had a lot of unknowns for me,” Firth described. “I mean, I read it and I felt there were a lot of questions. I was fascinated by the notion of ordinariness – or apparent ordinariness. People who you could dismiss as ordinary or boring. People whose lives seem to be a series of disappointments.”
“The script in general terms was just completely refreshing in how original it was,” added Blunt. “It was pretty uncompromising, actually. It didn’t want to conform to being any genre or anything I could kind of sum up in a one-liner pitch. I liked the idea of the more we mask ourselves, maybe the freer we are able to be within ourselves. That idea, that everyone has at some point wanted to escape or run away or take on a different identity, I think we’ve all felt it.”
Ariola hopes that audiences will look at the film’s exploration of identity and its implications and ask themselves, “Am I living an authentic life or do I have identities as well?” ARTHUR NEWMAN opens in limited release in New York and Los Angeles on April 26, 2013.
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