USA: JENNIFER ANISTON TALKS ABOUT HER LATEST FILM "THE GOOD GIRL " WHICH OPENS THE SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL

Record ID: 392357

  • Title: USA: JENNIFER ANISTON TALKS ABOUT HER LATEST FILM "THE GOOD GIRL " WHICH OPENS THE SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL
  • Date: 10th January 2002
  • Summary: PARK CITY, UTAH, UNITED STATES (JANUARY 10, 2002) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL) ( * BEWARE FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY **) VARIOUS, ICE SKATERS SKATING AT A PARK CITY OPEN AIR ICE RINK SCU SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL BANNER SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, UNITED STATES (JANUARY 10, 2002) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL SLV / SMV ACTOR/ DIRECTOR ROBERT REDFORD ACKNOWLEDGING AUDIENCE APPLAUSE SMV /PAN MEDIA SMV SO
  • Embargoed: 25th January 2002 12:00
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  • Location: PARK CITY, UTAH, UNITED STATES
  • Country: USA
  • Reuters ID: LVAELETZ2DYCRNJGEIG4XZL1J04D
  • Story Text: The curtain rose on the Sundance Film Festival Thursday (January 10) night with the premiere of "The Laramie Project,'' a socially conscious film that festival organizers say reflects a new sensibility outside mainstream Hollywood moviemaking. Sundance is the United States' top festival for independent cinema, and each year fans from around the world flock here to see the best films from emerging writers, directors and actors -- directors like Miguel Arteta and actors like Jennifer Aniston, who worked together on "The Good Girl." Aniston and her co-star Jake Gyllenhaal talked to Reuters about the film.
    This year, the Sundance movies continue a trend -- which began in several of last year's festival favourites such as "The Believer" -- that illustrates a willingness among independent filmmakers to tackle social issues Hollywood prefers to avoid. In "The Believer," 2001's Grand Jury Prize winner for best drama, the subject was a young Jewish man's who becomes a neo-Nazi after his faith in Judaism falters.
    "The Laramie Project" looks at how the townspeople of Laramie, Wyoming, dealt with the murder of gay man Matthew Shepard in October 1998.
    Robert Redford, whose Sundance Institute sponsors the festival and celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, said he sees Americans searching for a new sensitivity and social consciousness after Sept. 11, and "indie" films provide a means by which Americans can explore their lives more deeply.
    "Here comes independent film and, I think, it provides a nice vehicle for that search," he told audiences at packed Maurice Abravanel Hall in downtown Salt Lake City where the "Laramie Project" premiered.
    Redford's comments echoed similar statements made by festival co-director Geoffrey Gilmore to Reuters at the festival's opening premiere.
    "The issues for us that you start to deal with are of course, not that the films in this festival were affected by September 11th, but that the audience were. And that the sensibilities that we're talking about now is one that's not of that kind of personal, maybe that personal self-centredness which the 90's was so full of but ultimately about a world in which people's experiences more I think outward, looking towards other kinds of issues and other experiences and not that kind of twenty-something inner angst that for a while seemed to dominate the independent film world," Gilmore said.
    Directed by Moises Kaufman, "The Laramie Project" recounts the efforts of a group of New York actors calling themselves the Tectonic Theater Project, who travelled to Laramie after Shepard was found nearly beaten to death, tied to a fence post and left to die. The hate crime became a national media event.
    Two young men who were born and raised in Laramie, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, were charged with his murder.
    Both are now in prison serving life sentences for the crime.
    The Tectonic actors conducted some 200 interviews with Laramie's citizens, then wrote and produced a play that attempts to put a face on "Matt," depict the cruelties humans inflict on one another, a illustrate people's ability to heal emotional wounds. The movie is told in a sort of documentary style, but the people of Laramie are played by many of the independent cinema world's most popular actors such as Steve Buscemi, Christina Ricci, Janeane Garofalo, Laura Linney and Peter Fonda.
    Sundance held its premiere and a crowded party afterward in Salt Lake City, but the bulk of the festival takes place in Park City, Utah -- the site of this year's Winter Olympics about 30 miles east of Salt Lake. It is in Salt Lake that indie filmmakers staple flyers around town, approach passers-by on the street imploring strangers to see their films, and hope to rub elbows with studio bigwigs and film distributors who will hopefully pick up their films.
    One such filmmaker is Miguel Arteta who directed "The Good Girl," starring Jennifer Aniston. And if early crowd enthusiasm holds out, her role as a Texas girl with a deadbeat husband and a dead-end job may just help Aniston prove that good girls can finish first.
    Despite TV celebrity, Aniston's record at movie box offices has been less-than-stellar with roles in high-profile, yet low-grossing films like romantic comedy "She's The One"

    (1996) and last fall's love story "Rock Star."
    "The Good Girl" premiered at Sundance, and it is just the opposite: a low-profile independent movie from the director and writer of 1999 independent film "Chuck & Buck." Distributors at Sundance, a top market for independent film buyers, are circling the film like hawks over the Texas prairie.
    Fresh from the premiere, Aniston was answering reporters' questions about the movie, and inevitably up popped the question, how could someone married to Hollywood's top heartthrob Brad Pitt, with a long-running hit television series, making top dollar for that series, possibly identify with a small-town woman stuck in a dead-end marriage? "I think it's feeling those moments of just being stuck, depressed, lost, loss of passion and loss of the self and whether you're there or in a big, fancy city, I think we all relate to those feelings and also not making good choices all the time or just making a choice that in that moment, it feels like the right choice and it's ... You don't feel judgement against anyone in this movie, I don't think," Aniston told Reuters.
    In the movie, Aniston finally gets to show she's not just another pretty Hollywood face. She plays Justine, who sells cosmetics at a small-town retail store. She's been married seven years to Phil (John C. Reilly) who spends most of his time smoking pot with his buddy, Bubba (Tim Blake Nelson).
    Justine and Phil are trying to have a baby, with no luck. She loves him, but life with the constantly stoned Phil is lonely, and she wants desperately to escape the monotony. Despite her own misgivings, Justine dives into an adulterous affair with a younger man and colleague, Holden (Jake Gyllenhaal).
    Justine knows Holden is, as she puts it, "at worst a child and at best a demon," but she can't help herself. When Bubba learns of the affair, Justine starts on a downward spiral of bad to worse in an effort, she says, "not to hurt anyone,"
    especially her husband.
    Fans of "Chuck & Buck," will remember Arteta's story about a gay man who comes to Los Angeles to be near his boyhood friend, andup stalking him. It was funny, but it had a sinister side. Despite it's name, "The Good Girl" falls into the same category. It's a darkly humorous tale that asks the question: what is a good girl, really? It's a challenging role for Aniston because it strays from the mainstream romances she's appeared in to date.
    "It was just timing, came at a point in my life where I had been willing, something different other than another mundane, romantic comedy -- not to put those down -- but I was just like, people want you to do something, they kind of put you into those little categories. I just really wanted to take a chance to do something different because I really want to do this, I want to act for a long time and I don't want to burn out. So, somebody was listening because then this amazing piece comes across my desk that just in an hour and a half, read it and was just crushed, moved, and couldn't believe it was coming to me. It was amazing," Aniston said.
    It's stars like Aniston and reactions like Aniston's that have brought increased attention to independent films and increased attention to Sundance. The festival culminates in a gala awards show on Jan. 19, andon the 20th.
    ----ENDS----
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