Saturday, March 31, 2012
Mark Wahlberg interviewed about Ted
Mark Wahlberg says does some singing and dancing in the movie "Ted" in this recent interview with Mark and Seth MacFarlane.
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Pain and Gain filming at Miami-Dade County jail
Here is an update on the filming of Pain and Gain from GossipExtra.com:
If you spotted Hollywood star Mark Wahlberg at a Miami-Dade County jail Tuesday, you saw right.
No, Wahlberg isn’t reverting back to his old ways of a street thug.
It’s just that Tuesday marked the start of filming for the Michael Bay shoot’em’up Pain and Gain, with Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, Ed Harris and Tony Shalhoub.
And the first scenes were filmed at The Stockade, aka The Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center, a working, temporary holding facility near Miami International Airport.
Film Commissioner Sandy Lighterman tells me producers used an empty space inside the jail, and shot scenes by the barbwire fence outside.
The inmates?
“They were on lockdown for a while,” Lighterman said, “but things were done with minimal disturbance to them.”
The $25 million-film’s expected to be produced in its entirety in Miami-Dade and Broward counties over the next two months. The screenplay is based on a Miami New Times story about a crime spree by bodybuilders who worked out of the Sun Gym. They became known as the Sun Gym Gang. Two members, Daniel Lugo and Adrian Doorbal, are currently on death row.
If you spotted Hollywood star Mark Wahlberg at a Miami-Dade County jail Tuesday, you saw right.
No, Wahlberg isn’t reverting back to his old ways of a street thug.
It’s just that Tuesday marked the start of filming for the Michael Bay shoot’em’up Pain and Gain, with Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, Ed Harris and Tony Shalhoub.
And the first scenes were filmed at The Stockade, aka The Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center, a working, temporary holding facility near Miami International Airport.
Film Commissioner Sandy Lighterman tells me producers used an empty space inside the jail, and shot scenes by the barbwire fence outside.
The inmates?
“They were on lockdown for a while,” Lighterman said, “but things were done with minimal disturbance to them.”
The $25 million-film’s expected to be produced in its entirety in Miami-Dade and Broward counties over the next two months. The screenplay is based on a Miami New Times story about a crime spree by bodybuilders who worked out of the Sun Gym. They became known as the Sun Gym Gang. Two members, Daniel Lugo and Adrian Doorbal, are currently on death row.
Monday, March 26, 2012
Video about Wahlburgers from CBS Boston
CBS Boston posted a new video and article about Wahlbrugers:
HINGHAM (CBS) – The hottest new burger joint this side of Hollywood, Walhburgers, is the newest creation of chef Paul Wahlberg, and his famous actor brothers Mark and Donnie.
Located in the Hingham Shipyard, across the street from their other restaurant Alma Nove, Wahlburgers serves burgers, dogs, shakes, and fries.
Here, the three-ounce all-natural burgers are griddled on the flat-top, and served up with lettuce, tomato, and homemade pickles, on a fresh baked roll.
Plus, there are three specialty burgers, one for each brother. And if you look closely, you’ll see that the toppings are actually on the bottom, so you get all the right stuff in every mouthful.
In addition the burgers, there are creamy frappes, golden fried sides, and steamed hot dogs.
And while Paul is the Wahlberg brother you’re most likely to see at the restaurant, Mark and Donnie are well represented here too with their movie clips on the TV’s, and posters on the walls.
“It pays homage to who we are as a family. From our roots in Dorchester, all the way to today,” said Paul.
HINGHAM (CBS) – The hottest new burger joint this side of Hollywood, Walhburgers, is the newest creation of chef Paul Wahlberg, and his famous actor brothers Mark and Donnie.
Located in the Hingham Shipyard, across the street from their other restaurant Alma Nove, Wahlburgers serves burgers, dogs, shakes, and fries.
Here, the three-ounce all-natural burgers are griddled on the flat-top, and served up with lettuce, tomato, and homemade pickles, on a fresh baked roll.
Plus, there are three specialty burgers, one for each brother. And if you look closely, you’ll see that the toppings are actually on the bottom, so you get all the right stuff in every mouthful.
In addition the burgers, there are creamy frappes, golden fried sides, and steamed hot dogs.
And while Paul is the Wahlberg brother you’re most likely to see at the restaurant, Mark and Donnie are well represented here too with their movie clips on the TV’s, and posters on the walls.
“It pays homage to who we are as a family. From our roots in Dorchester, all the way to today,” said Paul.
Friday, March 23, 2012
Mark Wahlberg interview with Digital Spy
Here is a clip of an interview Mark Wahlberg did with Digital Spy:
Video courtesy of digitalspy
Video courtesy of digitalspy
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Monsters and Critics article about Mark Wahlberg
Mark is interviewed by Monsters and Critics about spoiling his kids.
Mark Wahlberg finds it hard not to spoil his kids.
The 40-year-old 'Contraband' actor - who has children Ella, eight, Michael, six, Brendan, three and one-year-old Grace with wife Rhea Durham - admits he likes to treat his brood but insists they understand the importance of giving back.
He said: 'I do spoil them to a certain extent but they also understand that not a lot of people have this life.
'My kids like giving back. My daughter's always telling me: 'Pop, I'm going to take these toys to the hospital for the sick kids and the less fortunate'. They still live in the real world but it's a fine line. I certainly want my kids to have everything that I never had but you also want them to appreciate the value of things.
'Nobody in my family, my parents or their parents, had money or success. I worked hard to get what I have and I still work hard every day.'
Having been raised by as the youngest of nine children in Boston, Massachusetts, Mark believes fame and fortune haven't diluted his working-class attitude.
He told the Metro newspaper: 'Obviously, I am still the same at the core. Just because you have money doesn't really change you.
'Listen, I've always thought that at any time it could all go away and I could end up right where I came from. I have a lot of people keeping me grounded: my wife, my mother and my friends.'
Mark Wahlberg finds it hard not to spoil his kids.
The 40-year-old 'Contraband' actor - who has children Ella, eight, Michael, six, Brendan, three and one-year-old Grace with wife Rhea Durham - admits he likes to treat his brood but insists they understand the importance of giving back.
He said: 'I do spoil them to a certain extent but they also understand that not a lot of people have this life.
'My kids like giving back. My daughter's always telling me: 'Pop, I'm going to take these toys to the hospital for the sick kids and the less fortunate'. They still live in the real world but it's a fine line. I certainly want my kids to have everything that I never had but you also want them to appreciate the value of things.
'Nobody in my family, my parents or their parents, had money or success. I worked hard to get what I have and I still work hard every day.'
Having been raised by as the youngest of nine children in Boston, Massachusetts, Mark believes fame and fortune haven't diluted his working-class attitude.
He told the Metro newspaper: 'Obviously, I am still the same at the core. Just because you have money doesn't really change you.
'Listen, I've always thought that at any time it could all go away and I could end up right where I came from. I have a lot of people keeping me grounded: my wife, my mother and my friends.'
Update on Wahlburgers from the Boston Herald
Here is an update about Wahlburgers from the Boston Herald:
Wahlburgers NOT Opening in UK and Ireland in 2012
Think Mark Wahlberg is getting ahead of himself? The Hollywood heavy, who opened Wahlburgers, a Hingham Shipyard burger emporium with his brothers, Donnie and Paul, last fall told a UK paper yesterday that the bros plan to “open a bunch of them in Britain and Ireland this year.”
Um, not so fast, Marky.
Donnie, who stars in CBS’ “Blue Bloods,” and Paul, a chef who owns Alma Nove across the street from the burger joint, said no one will be flipping burgers outside of Hingham — never mind outside of the country — for some time. In fact, the Fenway location that Mark told the Inside Track about a couple of weeks ago is still in the planning stages, report the brothers.
“We have a lot of interest from a lot of people who would like to franchise new locations, but we are a new business with a ways to go before we open location number two,” Donnie told the Track.
Paul’s spokesgal Mindy Valone said there are “no immediate plans for expansion at this time,” and “they’re talking about Boston, but nothing has been set in stone yet.”
The Brothers Wahlberg are “really happy with the success in Hingham,” she said. And no wonder.
“A successful burger place takes maybe $2,400 a day and a really successful one does $6,000,” Mark told the UK’s Metro. “We’re making $17,000 a day. There are lines queuing around the corner.”
@Wahlburgers, The Hingham Shipyard, 19 Shipyard Drive, Hingham, MA 781.749.2110
Wahlburgers NOT Opening in UK and Ireland in 2012
Think Mark Wahlberg is getting ahead of himself? The Hollywood heavy, who opened Wahlburgers, a Hingham Shipyard burger emporium with his brothers, Donnie and Paul, last fall told a UK paper yesterday that the bros plan to “open a bunch of them in Britain and Ireland this year.”
Um, not so fast, Marky.
Donnie, who stars in CBS’ “Blue Bloods,” and Paul, a chef who owns Alma Nove across the street from the burger joint, said no one will be flipping burgers outside of Hingham — never mind outside of the country — for some time. In fact, the Fenway location that Mark told the Inside Track about a couple of weeks ago is still in the planning stages, report the brothers.
“We have a lot of interest from a lot of people who would like to franchise new locations, but we are a new business with a ways to go before we open location number two,” Donnie told the Track.
Paul’s spokesgal Mindy Valone said there are “no immediate plans for expansion at this time,” and “they’re talking about Boston, but nothing has been set in stone yet.”
The Brothers Wahlberg are “really happy with the success in Hingham,” she said. And no wonder.
“A successful burger place takes maybe $2,400 a day and a really successful one does $6,000,” Mark told the UK’s Metro. “We’re making $17,000 a day. There are lines queuing around the corner.”
@Wahlburgers, The Hingham Shipyard, 19 Shipyard Drive, Hingham, MA 781.749.2110
Update on Teamsters from The Boston Globe
Here is an update about the Teamsters tv show from the Boston Globe:
Mark Wahlberg has already started shooting the pilot for “Teamsters,” his reality show about Boston Local 25. The union’s president, Sean O’Brien, told us yesterday that the “Teamsters” crew filmed Local 25’s membership meeting just over a week ago, and that they’ll come back to get more footage as soon as all parties involve tie up some legal issues. A&E announced earlier this month that the network would partner with Wahlberg for “Teamsters,” a reality show based on the 11,000-member Boston union. O’Brien told us yesterday that the show will follow the organization as it helps members deal with employment issues such as grievances. O’Brien said there’s been no word about whether certain members of the union will be featured more than others. He only promised that whatever we see will be real. “This is not reality TV,” he said. “It’s a documentary.”
Mark Wahlberg has already started shooting the pilot for “Teamsters,” his reality show about Boston Local 25. The union’s president, Sean O’Brien, told us yesterday that the “Teamsters” crew filmed Local 25’s membership meeting just over a week ago, and that they’ll come back to get more footage as soon as all parties involve tie up some legal issues. A&E announced earlier this month that the network would partner with Wahlberg for “Teamsters,” a reality show based on the 11,000-member Boston union. O’Brien told us yesterday that the show will follow the organization as it helps members deal with employment issues such as grievances. O’Brien said there’s been no word about whether certain members of the union will be featured more than others. He only promised that whatever we see will be real. “This is not reality TV,” he said. “It’s a documentary.”
Monday, March 19, 2012
Mark Wahlberg interviewed by Ain't It Cool News
Here is an interview with Mark and Seth MacFarlane from Ain't It Cool News:
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. So, I knew I was going to sit down with Seth MacFarlane after his big SXSW panel, but what I didn’t know is that we would be joined by Mark Wahlberg who stars in TED, MacFarlane’s debut feature film.
The flick is a hard R-rated comedy that opens this summer about a little boy who wishes his teddy bear would be a real friend. He gets his wish and after all the world is amazed by this Christmas miracle the bear grows up like anybody else. So you have a sweet childhood relationship that morphs into what typically happens with childhood best friends… a vulgar, friendly ribbing, wrestling, pot-smoking, video game playing, slacker pair of buddies. Except one of them happens to be a teddy bear and sound like Peter Griffin.
About 20 minutes prior to the interview I was alerted to that fact, so I did what I could to roll some question’s Wahlberg’s way.
These kinds of interviews are always a little difficult even with a significant heads up. I’m a fan of Family Guy, something Herc gives me endless amounts of shit for, but I had to ask questions about a film that I haven’t seen and only have a vague idea based on a few minutes of footage… in many ways, this is my average Comic-Con interview experience.
We began by my introducing myself to the two men and reminding Wahlberg that we briefly met during my time on The Lovely Bones set. That conversation spun off into New Zealand and Lord of the Rings which is what was being discussed when I got my recorder turned on. We’ll jump into the conversation there.
Enjoy!
Seth MacFarlane: I’m actually looking forward to that movie (THE HOBBIT). I was not a big LORD OF THE RINGS fan, but I’m looking forward to this one. I could never get into those books, the old ones. It’s…
Quint: Very dense.
Seth MacFarlane: Every time somebody is outdoors or passes a glade or is even by an open window, I have to read eight pages of fucking nature described.
Quint: (laughs) Yeah, Tolkien liked trees. THE HOBBIT is a lot more of an adventure story, that was written before Tolkien decided he wanted to really myth build and all of that stuff. We should probably talk a little bit about your movie instead of Peter Jackson’s movie. I think he’s going to have plenty of people talking about The Hobbit…
Seth MacFarlane: He’ll be fine. Don’t worry about him.
Quint: I’ll tell you at what point that I knew that we were kind of on the same page during the Ted footage presentation. Any time anybody shows even and inkling of love and respect to TEMPLE OF DOOM I feel like I’ve found a soul mate.
Seth MacFarlane: Doesn’t deserve the whipping that it some times gets.
Quint: It’s one of my favorites and I think it’s a very underrated movie.
Seth MacFarlane: It might be the best John Williams score ever.
Quint: Oh, it’s incredible. I listen to it all of the time. I thought it was a really good idea to show the opening eight minutes of TED, because you really set the fairy tale tone. I think when people see the red band trailer… that’s a little bit more what they are expecting from a feature from you and it will be more of a surprise I guess when they go into the theater and they see how it does have that very fairy tale, innocent beginning. Anybody who was an 80’s kid can recognize the detail of the world, whether it’s the INDY poster or people opening up a Nintendo. So I’d like to start with talking about finding that tone and talk about why you decided to take a little time to build the world before you break the innocence, I guess.
Seth MacFarlane: Yeah. The idea of keeping it very, very sweet and kind of massaging the audience’s experience from the get go for at least the first eight minutes or so was always part of the script and that radical tonal shift is deliberate. Obviously Patrick Stewart’s narration, which is not the last you hear of him in this movie… Yeah, it was something that was done purposefully and it does set a tone of sweetness that is carried throughout the film despite how edgy it is. There is a backbone of heart to this thing that I think might surprise some regular FAMILY GUY viewers.
Mark Wahlberg: I just observed the other day that the boy who plays “Young John,” he thinks it’s like this little sweet movie. They were showing some stuff and he was like trying to watch and his mother wouldn’t let him watch. (laughs) He was like “Why? What’s going on?”
Quint: In his mind it’s a Spielberg film! What’s really interesting though and in a very odd way, that stark contrast in a weird way grounds the movie. I don’t think the joke would have been funny if it had started with a wise-cracking teddy bear. I like that he grew up with the kid, matured as close childhood friends often do… I don’t know if there’s a question there… (laughs)
Seth MacFarlane: Well it’s a way to, hopefully, emotionally invest the audience from the get go. There’s a title sequence that you’re actually not seeing here where we kind of travel through the years a little bit with these characters and watch them grow up together and then you are kind of hit in the face with this present day reality.
Quint: Mark, is that kind of how you approached it? I think what makes the buddy aspect of it work, at least in the footage we saw, is that you don’t treat him any differently than you would treat any other friend. He just happens to be a teddy bear.
Mark Wahlberg: I love the relationship between them and again when I talked to Seth my biggest concern was that I could just try to play it as real as possible and play it as straight as possible and hopefully the laughs will come from the situation that they are in and the craziness that they are experiencing and the writing… It was really funny, but when I started to read the script, halfway through it you forget that it’s a bear and you’re just thinking “Wow, these guys have this great relationship and this guy is stuck in this dilemma between keeping his girlfriend happy and wanting to spend most of his time, if not all of his time, with his best friend.”
Quint: Yeah, again I think what really impresses me about the concept is that it’s a typical buddy film, but with a crazy supernatural element to it. I think that’s really fun.
Seth MacFarlane: We were shooting for that very contemporary R-rated in a lot of ways relationship comedy kind of tone, but one of the characters is of course CG and I’m not sure that that’s been done before. Maybe I’m missing something, but it was something very specific and I asked a lot of Mark. I think it’s a huge testament to him as an actor that essentially he was… Most of the movie… These are not action scenes, these are real scenes of relatability in which he is playing to empty space and he was seeing that bear there. He was speaking to empty space and yet interacting with someone and when the bear went in later on it just felt so organic. I don’t know that that would have been possible with another actor.
Quint: In the Q&A you mentioned that you were there with him and were doing your dialog with him and that you weren’t locked into a previously recorded track. You used the Bill Murray/Garfield analogy.
Seth MacFarlane: I know. I don’t mean to shit on that movie, but it’s the only example…
Quint: Murray shits on the movie. He doesn’t care!
Seth MacFarlane: That’s what I figured.
Quint: Every time somebody asks him why he did it, he’s like “They paid me two million bucks and I stood in a room for a day. I’ll do that job every day of the week.”
Seth MacFarlane: A lot of it is sound though, too. I mean we mic-ed the bear dialogue the same way as everyone else. Any environment we were in, it was all live. I do think no matter how sophisticated your mixer is, you are still artificially duplicating the sound of that room and on FAMILY GUY we did sort of a rough pass at this where we put Brian, the dog, on Bill Maher’s show and it was mic-ed the same way as everyone else and the sound of that room and the consistency of the recording quality really pulled him into that environment in a lot more than just with the audio that you think it would.
Quint: I have it imagine from an acting perspective that made all the difference in the world, where Mark’s not acting against just playback. So how did it work? I don’t imagine you were in the scene, but were you off camera?
Seth MacFarlane: Yeah. I was generally just off camera in the room as much as possible. Most of the scenes with John and Ted we did that way.
Quint: So you guys were acting together?
Mark Wahlberg: Yeah.
Quint: I have to imagine that helps, because you can actually read emotion.
Seth MacFarlane: Well, not really.
Mark Wahlberg: He’d be like over there (motions in his periphery) and I’d be here with this stuffed bear or a doll.
Seth MacFarlane: If the bear is sitting in this chair, I’m across the room and he’s looking at this empty chair and interacting. It’s a lot to think about all at once for an actor.
Mark Wahlberg: But it’s also just like being at home learning the lines and rehearsing. I spent hours looking at myself in the mirror and I just imagined… (Laughs) No, I’m kidding.
Quint: (laughs) You had me going there for a second. I’m like “Oh? Really? That’s your process, huh?”
Mark Wahlberg: No, I’m just fucking with you. I do remember hearing stories… I think it was Keanu Reeves who would just say the lines in the mirror like “Try it like this. No, no try it like that…”
Quint: So we didn’t see much of the relationship with Mila [Kunis]. Maybe we could talk a little bit about that and some of the other cast in the movie. I saw that Joel McHale, who is really funny, and a lot of the FAMILY GUY people pop up.
Seth MacFarlane: Giovanni Ribisi was also in the movie. He was great.
Quint: He can be really funny, too.
Mark Wahlberg: He’s spectacular.
Seth MacFarlane: Yeah, Mila… The challenge with that relationship and again this goes back to the whole premise being, ideally, tonally grounded in reality, at least as far as the audience is concerned. We wanted to treat this like this is somebody who is living with your boyfriend, from Mila’s perspective, who is a sap on your relationship who is just draining the life out of it, because he’s a leech and he’s been there for too long.
She played that so real and so effectively that it just worked and the trick too is with a character like that… You see often times in comedies the female character with her hands on her hips badgering the guy to do this or that and get his act together and often times it can come off very hen pecking and Mila is a very balanced, very shrewd actress who is able to acknowledge the dangers of that and really hone that performance in a way that…
Mark Wahlberg: She’s not a bitch.
Seth MacFarlane: Yeah, makes her stern with him and makes her persistent, but you get where she’s coming from. She’s right. Her character has a very legitimate beef.
Mark Wahlberg: Yeah, that’s a finer line to walk than either of us were doing. She had the tough part.
Seth MacFarlane: That’s true.
Mark Wahlberg: I smell a nomination. (laughs) Let’s start the campaign early.
Quint: So is there a child star aspect to Ted as a character?
Seth MacFarlane: A little bit. It’s something we hint at now and then, but I have always kind of wanted to underplay that. I feel like the uniqueness of this movie depends on the normalcy of this character living in this world. It’s like THE MUPPETS and all of my Muppets references are fucking old, but in THE GREAT MUPPET CAPER Kermit and Fozzy are working for a newspaper and their boss is chewing them out like “You didn’t get the story and we are going to lose money because of it!” It’s never mentioned that it’s a bear and a frog. They are just treated like normal citizens.
Quint: If that’s the reality established in the movie and you don’t betray it, the audience accepts it.
Seth MacFarlane: It is and I think all too often there’s a gimmick where “Oh, only this kid can hear his dog” or “only this person can hear this person talk.” That always drives me crazy. All it does is limit you.
Quint: To be honest, that’s where I thought this was going just from the description, but that all changed when young John introduces his new friend to his parents, when Ted walks into the kitchen the parents had a very natural reaction I thought. “Get my gun!”
Mark Wahlberg: “Is it a hugging gun?” (laughs)
Seth MacFarlane: Everything about it was supposed to be real. I mean this is a terrible analogy, but there was a movie called ALIEN NATION that came out in the 80’s and the whole premise was it was five years after the aliens landed and now everyone is used to them being around, that no matter how crazy and bizarre.
Mark Wahlberg: Yeah, yeah with Jimmy Caan?
Quint: Yeah.
Mark Wahlberg: His pants were hiked up a little too high.
Seth MacFarlane: (laughs) No matter how insane an event, eventually people just have to get used to it. If something like this happened, give it thirty years and no one would care anymore. They would just be like “Well, we can’t be shocked every day. Let’s go with it.”
Quint: So what’s the plan for the film? It’s a summer release, right?
Seth MacFarlane: Yeah, July.
Quint: Cool.
Mark Wahlberg: I think we want as few people as possible to see it. We’ll try a different approach. (laughs)
Quint: “Counter-counter promotion.” Cool, well I don’t think I have too much more, unless there’s something else you want to discuss.
Mark Wahlberg: Just convince everybody to go see this movie about how awesome it is. Give us an A+ rating.
Quint: (laughs). Well, thank you guys. I really appreciate your time.
And there you have it. Seth MacFarlane says Ted is like Alien Nation! Take it to the bank!
-Eric Vespe
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. So, I knew I was going to sit down with Seth MacFarlane after his big SXSW panel, but what I didn’t know is that we would be joined by Mark Wahlberg who stars in TED, MacFarlane’s debut feature film.
The flick is a hard R-rated comedy that opens this summer about a little boy who wishes his teddy bear would be a real friend. He gets his wish and after all the world is amazed by this Christmas miracle the bear grows up like anybody else. So you have a sweet childhood relationship that morphs into what typically happens with childhood best friends… a vulgar, friendly ribbing, wrestling, pot-smoking, video game playing, slacker pair of buddies. Except one of them happens to be a teddy bear and sound like Peter Griffin.
About 20 minutes prior to the interview I was alerted to that fact, so I did what I could to roll some question’s Wahlberg’s way.
These kinds of interviews are always a little difficult even with a significant heads up. I’m a fan of Family Guy, something Herc gives me endless amounts of shit for, but I had to ask questions about a film that I haven’t seen and only have a vague idea based on a few minutes of footage… in many ways, this is my average Comic-Con interview experience.
We began by my introducing myself to the two men and reminding Wahlberg that we briefly met during my time on The Lovely Bones set. That conversation spun off into New Zealand and Lord of the Rings which is what was being discussed when I got my recorder turned on. We’ll jump into the conversation there.
Enjoy!
Seth MacFarlane: I’m actually looking forward to that movie (THE HOBBIT). I was not a big LORD OF THE RINGS fan, but I’m looking forward to this one. I could never get into those books, the old ones. It’s…
Quint: Very dense.
Seth MacFarlane: Every time somebody is outdoors or passes a glade or is even by an open window, I have to read eight pages of fucking nature described.
Quint: (laughs) Yeah, Tolkien liked trees. THE HOBBIT is a lot more of an adventure story, that was written before Tolkien decided he wanted to really myth build and all of that stuff. We should probably talk a little bit about your movie instead of Peter Jackson’s movie. I think he’s going to have plenty of people talking about The Hobbit…
Seth MacFarlane: He’ll be fine. Don’t worry about him.
Quint: I’ll tell you at what point that I knew that we were kind of on the same page during the Ted footage presentation. Any time anybody shows even and inkling of love and respect to TEMPLE OF DOOM I feel like I’ve found a soul mate.
Seth MacFarlane: Doesn’t deserve the whipping that it some times gets.
Quint: It’s one of my favorites and I think it’s a very underrated movie.
Seth MacFarlane: It might be the best John Williams score ever.
Quint: Oh, it’s incredible. I listen to it all of the time. I thought it was a really good idea to show the opening eight minutes of TED, because you really set the fairy tale tone. I think when people see the red band trailer… that’s a little bit more what they are expecting from a feature from you and it will be more of a surprise I guess when they go into the theater and they see how it does have that very fairy tale, innocent beginning. Anybody who was an 80’s kid can recognize the detail of the world, whether it’s the INDY poster or people opening up a Nintendo. So I’d like to start with talking about finding that tone and talk about why you decided to take a little time to build the world before you break the innocence, I guess.
Seth MacFarlane: Yeah. The idea of keeping it very, very sweet and kind of massaging the audience’s experience from the get go for at least the first eight minutes or so was always part of the script and that radical tonal shift is deliberate. Obviously Patrick Stewart’s narration, which is not the last you hear of him in this movie… Yeah, it was something that was done purposefully and it does set a tone of sweetness that is carried throughout the film despite how edgy it is. There is a backbone of heart to this thing that I think might surprise some regular FAMILY GUY viewers.
Mark Wahlberg: I just observed the other day that the boy who plays “Young John,” he thinks it’s like this little sweet movie. They were showing some stuff and he was like trying to watch and his mother wouldn’t let him watch. (laughs) He was like “Why? What’s going on?”
Quint: In his mind it’s a Spielberg film! What’s really interesting though and in a very odd way, that stark contrast in a weird way grounds the movie. I don’t think the joke would have been funny if it had started with a wise-cracking teddy bear. I like that he grew up with the kid, matured as close childhood friends often do… I don’t know if there’s a question there… (laughs)
Seth MacFarlane: Well it’s a way to, hopefully, emotionally invest the audience from the get go. There’s a title sequence that you’re actually not seeing here where we kind of travel through the years a little bit with these characters and watch them grow up together and then you are kind of hit in the face with this present day reality.
Quint: Mark, is that kind of how you approached it? I think what makes the buddy aspect of it work, at least in the footage we saw, is that you don’t treat him any differently than you would treat any other friend. He just happens to be a teddy bear.
Mark Wahlberg: I love the relationship between them and again when I talked to Seth my biggest concern was that I could just try to play it as real as possible and play it as straight as possible and hopefully the laughs will come from the situation that they are in and the craziness that they are experiencing and the writing… It was really funny, but when I started to read the script, halfway through it you forget that it’s a bear and you’re just thinking “Wow, these guys have this great relationship and this guy is stuck in this dilemma between keeping his girlfriend happy and wanting to spend most of his time, if not all of his time, with his best friend.”
Quint: Yeah, again I think what really impresses me about the concept is that it’s a typical buddy film, but with a crazy supernatural element to it. I think that’s really fun.
Seth MacFarlane: We were shooting for that very contemporary R-rated in a lot of ways relationship comedy kind of tone, but one of the characters is of course CG and I’m not sure that that’s been done before. Maybe I’m missing something, but it was something very specific and I asked a lot of Mark. I think it’s a huge testament to him as an actor that essentially he was… Most of the movie… These are not action scenes, these are real scenes of relatability in which he is playing to empty space and he was seeing that bear there. He was speaking to empty space and yet interacting with someone and when the bear went in later on it just felt so organic. I don’t know that that would have been possible with another actor.
Quint: In the Q&A you mentioned that you were there with him and were doing your dialog with him and that you weren’t locked into a previously recorded track. You used the Bill Murray/Garfield analogy.
Seth MacFarlane: I know. I don’t mean to shit on that movie, but it’s the only example…
Quint: Murray shits on the movie. He doesn’t care!
Seth MacFarlane: That’s what I figured.
Quint: Every time somebody asks him why he did it, he’s like “They paid me two million bucks and I stood in a room for a day. I’ll do that job every day of the week.”
Seth MacFarlane: A lot of it is sound though, too. I mean we mic-ed the bear dialogue the same way as everyone else. Any environment we were in, it was all live. I do think no matter how sophisticated your mixer is, you are still artificially duplicating the sound of that room and on FAMILY GUY we did sort of a rough pass at this where we put Brian, the dog, on Bill Maher’s show and it was mic-ed the same way as everyone else and the sound of that room and the consistency of the recording quality really pulled him into that environment in a lot more than just with the audio that you think it would.
Quint: I have it imagine from an acting perspective that made all the difference in the world, where Mark’s not acting against just playback. So how did it work? I don’t imagine you were in the scene, but were you off camera?
Seth MacFarlane: Yeah. I was generally just off camera in the room as much as possible. Most of the scenes with John and Ted we did that way.
Quint: So you guys were acting together?
Mark Wahlberg: Yeah.
Quint: I have to imagine that helps, because you can actually read emotion.
Seth MacFarlane: Well, not really.
Mark Wahlberg: He’d be like over there (motions in his periphery) and I’d be here with this stuffed bear or a doll.
Seth MacFarlane: If the bear is sitting in this chair, I’m across the room and he’s looking at this empty chair and interacting. It’s a lot to think about all at once for an actor.
Mark Wahlberg: But it’s also just like being at home learning the lines and rehearsing. I spent hours looking at myself in the mirror and I just imagined… (Laughs) No, I’m kidding.
Quint: (laughs) You had me going there for a second. I’m like “Oh? Really? That’s your process, huh?”
Mark Wahlberg: No, I’m just fucking with you. I do remember hearing stories… I think it was Keanu Reeves who would just say the lines in the mirror like “Try it like this. No, no try it like that…”
Quint: So we didn’t see much of the relationship with Mila [Kunis]. Maybe we could talk a little bit about that and some of the other cast in the movie. I saw that Joel McHale, who is really funny, and a lot of the FAMILY GUY people pop up.
Seth MacFarlane: Giovanni Ribisi was also in the movie. He was great.
Quint: He can be really funny, too.
Mark Wahlberg: He’s spectacular.
Seth MacFarlane: Yeah, Mila… The challenge with that relationship and again this goes back to the whole premise being, ideally, tonally grounded in reality, at least as far as the audience is concerned. We wanted to treat this like this is somebody who is living with your boyfriend, from Mila’s perspective, who is a sap on your relationship who is just draining the life out of it, because he’s a leech and he’s been there for too long.
She played that so real and so effectively that it just worked and the trick too is with a character like that… You see often times in comedies the female character with her hands on her hips badgering the guy to do this or that and get his act together and often times it can come off very hen pecking and Mila is a very balanced, very shrewd actress who is able to acknowledge the dangers of that and really hone that performance in a way that…
Mark Wahlberg: She’s not a bitch.
Seth MacFarlane: Yeah, makes her stern with him and makes her persistent, but you get where she’s coming from. She’s right. Her character has a very legitimate beef.
Mark Wahlberg: Yeah, that’s a finer line to walk than either of us were doing. She had the tough part.
Seth MacFarlane: That’s true.
Mark Wahlberg: I smell a nomination. (laughs) Let’s start the campaign early.
Quint: So is there a child star aspect to Ted as a character?
Seth MacFarlane: A little bit. It’s something we hint at now and then, but I have always kind of wanted to underplay that. I feel like the uniqueness of this movie depends on the normalcy of this character living in this world. It’s like THE MUPPETS and all of my Muppets references are fucking old, but in THE GREAT MUPPET CAPER Kermit and Fozzy are working for a newspaper and their boss is chewing them out like “You didn’t get the story and we are going to lose money because of it!” It’s never mentioned that it’s a bear and a frog. They are just treated like normal citizens.
Quint: If that’s the reality established in the movie and you don’t betray it, the audience accepts it.
Seth MacFarlane: It is and I think all too often there’s a gimmick where “Oh, only this kid can hear his dog” or “only this person can hear this person talk.” That always drives me crazy. All it does is limit you.
Quint: To be honest, that’s where I thought this was going just from the description, but that all changed when young John introduces his new friend to his parents, when Ted walks into the kitchen the parents had a very natural reaction I thought. “Get my gun!”
Mark Wahlberg: “Is it a hugging gun?” (laughs)
Seth MacFarlane: Everything about it was supposed to be real. I mean this is a terrible analogy, but there was a movie called ALIEN NATION that came out in the 80’s and the whole premise was it was five years after the aliens landed and now everyone is used to them being around, that no matter how crazy and bizarre.
Mark Wahlberg: Yeah, yeah with Jimmy Caan?
Quint: Yeah.
Mark Wahlberg: His pants were hiked up a little too high.
Seth MacFarlane: (laughs) No matter how insane an event, eventually people just have to get used to it. If something like this happened, give it thirty years and no one would care anymore. They would just be like “Well, we can’t be shocked every day. Let’s go with it.”
Quint: So what’s the plan for the film? It’s a summer release, right?
Seth MacFarlane: Yeah, July.
Quint: Cool.
Mark Wahlberg: I think we want as few people as possible to see it. We’ll try a different approach. (laughs)
Quint: “Counter-counter promotion.” Cool, well I don’t think I have too much more, unless there’s something else you want to discuss.
Mark Wahlberg: Just convince everybody to go see this movie about how awesome it is. Give us an A+ rating.
Quint: (laughs). Well, thank you guys. I really appreciate your time.
And there you have it. Seth MacFarlane says Ted is like Alien Nation! Take it to the bank!
-Eric Vespe
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Mark Wahlberg/Justin Bieber Basketball Movie Update from ClevverNews
Here is a quick video update about the Mark Wahlberg/Justin Bieber Basketball Movie:
Video courtesy of ClevverNews
Video courtesy of ClevverNews
Friday, March 16, 2012
Entourage: 8th Season on DVD June 12
Entourage: The Complete Eighth And Final Season will be released on DVD and Blue Ray on June 12, 2012
Click here to pre-order!
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Mark Wahlberg talks about the downside of being an actor
Mark is quoted in a recent article from Celebrity Baby Scoop talking about what kids think of him being an actor and what he doesn't care for in his job.
It seems like it would be pretty cool to have a mega movie star for a dad, but actor Mark Wahlberg says his kids wish he had a different day job.
"My kids would rather I be a construction worker," says the dad-of-four. "They haven't really seen my movies yet, but they know Daddy has to leave and go away and they don't like it."
The star of The Fighter says he’s not too fond of all the travel either, but unfortunately it comes with the job: "I would love to make all the movies that I make in and around Los Angeles, it's just unfortunate that they don't really shoot movies in LA anymore,” Mark reveals. "Hopefully, if I continue to have some sort of say, I can change that, but I can't allow the fact that I'm a dad to dictate the choices I make as an actor…. I will have some explaining to do, but hopefully not until my kids are old enough to understand."
He’s not exactly known for his family-friendly film picks, but Mark insists he’d sign on to a kids’ movie if the right one came along, saying, “I wouldn't rule out making something family-friendly, it just hasn't come my way yet."
Mark and his wife Rhea Durham are parents to kids Ella, 8, Michael, almost 6, Brandon, 3, and Grace, 2.
Mark Wahlberg: My Kids Wish I Had A Different Job
It seems like it would be pretty cool to have a mega movie star for a dad, but actor Mark Wahlberg says his kids wish he had a different day job.
"My kids would rather I be a construction worker," says the dad-of-four. "They haven't really seen my movies yet, but they know Daddy has to leave and go away and they don't like it."
The star of The Fighter says he’s not too fond of all the travel either, but unfortunately it comes with the job: "I would love to make all the movies that I make in and around Los Angeles, it's just unfortunate that they don't really shoot movies in LA anymore,” Mark reveals. "Hopefully, if I continue to have some sort of say, I can change that, but I can't allow the fact that I'm a dad to dictate the choices I make as an actor…. I will have some explaining to do, but hopefully not until my kids are old enough to understand."
He’s not exactly known for his family-friendly film picks, but Mark insists he’d sign on to a kids’ movie if the right one came along, saying, “I wouldn't rule out making something family-friendly, it just hasn't come my way yet."
Mark and his wife Rhea Durham are parents to kids Ella, 8, Michael, almost 6, Brandon, 3, and Grace, 2.
The Guardian: Update on The Fighter 2
Here is an article from The Guardian about the sequel to The Fighter:
Star of The Fighter says sequel to Oscar-winning boxing drama will centre on Micky Ward's trio of fights with rival Arturo Gatti
The proposed sequel to Oscar-winning boxing drama The Fighter will centre on Boston boxer "Irish" Micky Ward's legendary trio of fights with light welterweight rival Arturo Gatti, star Mark Wahlberg has said.
The Fighter, directed by David O Russell, concluded with Ward's victorious title bout for the WBU light welterweight championship with Britain's Shea Neary in 2000 at the age of 35, leaving the door open for a sequel focusing on his later rivalry with Gatti.
Christian Bale won a best supporting actor Academy Award in 2011 for his performance as Ward's half-brother and trainer Dicky Eklund, who oversaw his sibling's Rocky-like trip to victory despite his own struggles with addiction. Melissa Leo was victorious in the best supporting actress category for her turn as Ward's mother and one-time manager Alice.
Wahlberg, who played Ward, told Digital Spy the second film was "not really a follow-up to The Fighter". He added: "It's ... much more of a study of Micky Ward and his relationship that formed from that first fight with Gatti. They became very close... and still went in the ring to try to kill each other."
The first and third of Ward's trio of extremely close and hard-fought back-to-back bouts with Gatti were named Fight of the Year by boxing magazine Ring for 2002 and 2003 and saw both fighters requiring post-match hospital treatment. Ward won the first fight but was narrowly defeated in the subsequent two.
Wahlberg said earlier this year that he wanted Contraband director Baltasar Kormákur to consider directing the sequel, with Russell no longer involved due to disagreements over the screenplay. The actor told The Playlist: "We got to do that film before I get too old. So maybe in the next year, year and a half. We have to wait for the script, and then we'll choose a director."
So far there's no word on whether Bale and Leo will reprise their Oscar-winning roles.
The Fighter 2 will put Ward and Gatti back in the ring, says Mark Wahlberg
Star of The Fighter says sequel to Oscar-winning boxing drama will centre on Micky Ward's trio of fights with rival Arturo Gatti
The proposed sequel to Oscar-winning boxing drama The Fighter will centre on Boston boxer "Irish" Micky Ward's legendary trio of fights with light welterweight rival Arturo Gatti, star Mark Wahlberg has said.
The Fighter, directed by David O Russell, concluded with Ward's victorious title bout for the WBU light welterweight championship with Britain's Shea Neary in 2000 at the age of 35, leaving the door open for a sequel focusing on his later rivalry with Gatti.
Christian Bale won a best supporting actor Academy Award in 2011 for his performance as Ward's half-brother and trainer Dicky Eklund, who oversaw his sibling's Rocky-like trip to victory despite his own struggles with addiction. Melissa Leo was victorious in the best supporting actress category for her turn as Ward's mother and one-time manager Alice.
Wahlberg, who played Ward, told Digital Spy the second film was "not really a follow-up to The Fighter". He added: "It's ... much more of a study of Micky Ward and his relationship that formed from that first fight with Gatti. They became very close... and still went in the ring to try to kill each other."
The first and third of Ward's trio of extremely close and hard-fought back-to-back bouts with Gatti were named Fight of the Year by boxing magazine Ring for 2002 and 2003 and saw both fighters requiring post-match hospital treatment. Ward won the first fight but was narrowly defeated in the subsequent two.
Wahlberg said earlier this year that he wanted Contraband director Baltasar Kormákur to consider directing the sequel, with Russell no longer involved due to disagreements over the screenplay. The actor told The Playlist: "We got to do that film before I get too old. So maybe in the next year, year and a half. We have to wait for the script, and then we'll choose a director."
So far there's no word on whether Bale and Leo will reprise their Oscar-winning roles.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Update on The Fighter 2 from the Boston Herald
The Boston Herald reports The Fighter 2 will focus on Ward’s relationship with Arturo Gatti. Here is the article:
Mark Wahlberg likes Facebook
MARK WAHLBERG is down with social media. The former Dot rat posted a photo of himself on his Facebook wall thanking the half-million fans who “liked” him. Meanwhile, Mark gave some new details to Digital Spy about the storyline for “The Fighter 2,” the sequel to his hit 2010 flick about Lowell fighter Micky Ward. Wahlberg said the film will focus on Ward’s relationship with Arturo Gatti, whom he fought three times. “They became very close ... and still went in the ring to try to kill each other,” Mark said. “It’s not really a follow-up to ‘The Fighter’ ... much more of a study of Micky Ward and the relationship that formed from that first fight with Gatti
Mark Wahlberg likes Facebook
MARK WAHLBERG is down with social media. The former Dot rat posted a photo of himself on his Facebook wall thanking the half-million fans who “liked” him. Meanwhile, Mark gave some new details to Digital Spy about the storyline for “The Fighter 2,” the sequel to his hit 2010 flick about Lowell fighter Micky Ward. Wahlberg said the film will focus on Ward’s relationship with Arturo Gatti, whom he fought three times. “They became very close ... and still went in the ring to try to kill each other,” Mark said. “It’s not really a follow-up to ‘The Fighter’ ... much more of a study of Micky Ward and the relationship that formed from that first fight with Gatti
Mark Wahlberg Confirms Justin Bieber movie being written
In an article from Ace Show Biz, Mark confirm that they have already begun writing for the movie with Justin Bieber. Here is the article:
Justin Bieber's Basketball Movie Already in Writing Stage, Mark Wahlberg Confirms
Announcing that the yet-to-be-titled film project is still underway, Wahlberg says that he wants to make sure the screenplay is being written properly before the movie moves forward into production.
Back in 2011, it was reported that Justin Bieber has been tapped to star in an untitled basketball movie opposite Mark Wahlberg. Though the long-gestating project hasn't been green-lighted until now, Wahlberg himself has made it clear that the gig is still underway and is currently in the writing stage.
Sharing some updates on the film's progress to MTV, the Oscar nominee stated, "We're waiting for the script." The 40-year-old thesp explained furthermore, "Waiting for the script. Every time I see [Bieber] or Scooter [Braun], I have to explain to them that it's a bit of a process having the script written."
The Sean Dignam of "The Departed" noted that he wants to make sure that the screenplay is written properly before the film finally moves forward into production. "It certainly [has to be] something that's good enough to go and have green-lit and make right away," so said the actor before adding, "But I think it will be well worth the wait."
The untitled Justin Bieber Basketball movie is designed as a dramatic street basketball movie in the vein of Martin Scorsese's 1986 pic, "The Color of Money". The husband of Rhea Durham will star as a weathered baller who takes a younger player [Bieber] as his protege.
In addition to starring in it, the "Contraband" actor will serve as the producer along with Stephen Levinson and Bieber's manager Scooter Braun. Serving as the scribe, meanwhile, is "How to Make It in America" creator Ian Edelman.
Last December, Wahlberg shared that it was his intuition that led him to cast the "Baby" hitmaker in his upcoming movie. "I'm pretty intuitive," he claimed. "I see the guy and spent time with him, and you see what he does and how he does it, and then you actually have a conversation with him, and it's there."
Justin Bieber's Basketball Movie Already in Writing Stage, Mark Wahlberg Confirms
Announcing that the yet-to-be-titled film project is still underway, Wahlberg says that he wants to make sure the screenplay is being written properly before the movie moves forward into production.
Back in 2011, it was reported that Justin Bieber has been tapped to star in an untitled basketball movie opposite Mark Wahlberg. Though the long-gestating project hasn't been green-lighted until now, Wahlberg himself has made it clear that the gig is still underway and is currently in the writing stage.
Sharing some updates on the film's progress to MTV, the Oscar nominee stated, "We're waiting for the script." The 40-year-old thesp explained furthermore, "Waiting for the script. Every time I see [Bieber] or Scooter [Braun], I have to explain to them that it's a bit of a process having the script written."
The Sean Dignam of "The Departed" noted that he wants to make sure that the screenplay is written properly before the film finally moves forward into production. "It certainly [has to be] something that's good enough to go and have green-lit and make right away," so said the actor before adding, "But I think it will be well worth the wait."
The untitled Justin Bieber Basketball movie is designed as a dramatic street basketball movie in the vein of Martin Scorsese's 1986 pic, "The Color of Money". The husband of Rhea Durham will star as a weathered baller who takes a younger player [Bieber] as his protege.
In addition to starring in it, the "Contraband" actor will serve as the producer along with Stephen Levinson and Bieber's manager Scooter Braun. Serving as the scribe, meanwhile, is "How to Make It in America" creator Ian Edelman.
Last December, Wahlberg shared that it was his intuition that led him to cast the "Baby" hitmaker in his upcoming movie. "I'm pretty intuitive," he claimed. "I see the guy and spent time with him, and you see what he does and how he does it, and then you actually have a conversation with him, and it's there."
Monday, March 12, 2012
The Wanted may make appearance in Entourage movie
Here is an article from Entertainment Wise which reports Mark talked to the boy band The Wanted about a possible appearance in the movie version of Entourage:
The Wanted Tipped To Appear In Entourage Movie
The Wanted could be set to appear in the big screen adaptation of US TV hit Entourage, it has been claimed today.
The 'Glad You Came' boyband have gone down a storm in the States and recently let with Mark Wahlberg, Hollywood actor and producer of Entourage.
It is believed that he was bowled over by the boys and is desperate to get them in his movie, starring alongside characters such as Vincent Chase and Ari Gold.
"The boys got on like a house on fire with Mark when they met him at Sandy Lane resort and they've kept in touch," a source told The Mirror. "Mark is a big fan and wants them to star in the film in some capacity. The Wanted are hot right now and Mark is right to want to capitalise on this."
The Wanted's US success continues then it seems, just days after they crashed the official charts and filmed an appearance on returning MTV show Punk'd.
Meanwhile, One Direction have been confirmed as musical guests on an upcoming episode of Saturday Night Live.
The Wanted Tipped To Appear In Entourage Movie
The Wanted could be set to appear in the big screen adaptation of US TV hit Entourage, it has been claimed today.
The 'Glad You Came' boyband have gone down a storm in the States and recently let with Mark Wahlberg, Hollywood actor and producer of Entourage.
It is believed that he was bowled over by the boys and is desperate to get them in his movie, starring alongside characters such as Vincent Chase and Ari Gold.
"The boys got on like a house on fire with Mark when they met him at Sandy Lane resort and they've kept in touch," a source told The Mirror. "Mark is a big fan and wants them to star in the film in some capacity. The Wanted are hot right now and Mark is right to want to capitalise on this."
The Wanted's US success continues then it seems, just days after they crashed the official charts and filmed an appearance on returning MTV show Punk'd.
Meanwhile, One Direction have been confirmed as musical guests on an upcoming episode of Saturday Night Live.
Sunday, March 11, 2012
The debut of Ted at SXSW
The Huffington Post reports Mark Wahlberg and Seth MacFarlane debuting "Ted" the Austin Convention Center:
Seth MacFarlane, Mark Wahlberg Debut 'Ted' Footage
For his feature film directorial debut, Seth MacFarlane didn't play it safe by putting out a "Family Guy" movie; instead, he wrote an R-rated, live-action comedy-animation hybrid about a man and his talking teddy bear. In the packed Vimeo Theater inside the Austin Convention Center at SXSW on Sunday morning, MacFarlane and surprise-guest Mark Wahlberg unveiled the first public look at "Ted."
Out July 13, "Ted" follows John Bennett (Wahlberg), a Boston-bred man who, when he was a kid, wished that his teddy bear, Ted (voiced by MacFarlane), would come alive. Surprise! He did, and -- when the initial shock wears off -- he and John grow up to be besties-in-arms, smoking pot and watching "Flash Gordon" on the regular.
Unfortunately, John's girlfriend (Mila Kunis) isn't pleased with their co-dependent relationship, and John must be forced to mature -- much to the consternation of Ted.
MacFarlane and Wahlberg debuted the first eight-minutes of "Ted," which sets up the initial premise: that Ted can walk and talk. The funny prologue -- featuring "Family Guy" star Alex Borstein as John's mom -- wisely puts "Ted" in the real world; the living teddy bear is featured on news broadcasts around the country and even makes an appearance on "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson." When things shift to the present day, Wahlberg has an easy rapport with his foul-mouthed furry friend, something made all the more impressive since he was mostly acting to nothing.
"It's a very challenging role, in a lot of ways," MacFarlane said. "It's a comedy, but you're interacting with empty space. One of the great things when we finally got [the effects done], was that Mark was so good and so convincing. When we finally put the bear in, it felt so organic and so real. It would sink or swim on whether you believe these two guys were together."
MacFarlane would run lines with Wahlberg off-camera -- which no doubt helped the star get comfortable -- but no amount of line-reading could make a scene like John's hotel-room brawl with Ted work. The second clip of the presentation highlighted this scene, which comes across all the more impressive when you consider Wahlberg was fighting himself, a la Edward Norton in "Fight Club."
"The goal with that fight from the start was to make it as real and as raw as if two guys were fighting in one of the 'Bourne' movies," MacFarlane told Moviefone after the presentation. "Whatever Mark was tapping into, performance wise, while we were shooting this movie, is in full-force in that scene."
As for Wahlberg -- who said he would act opposite either a stuffed bear or "a stick with two dots on it" -- he welcomed not having to deal with any other co-stars.
"I absolutely fell in love with the idea of not working with actors," he said to laughs during the panel. "I just did a movie with a bunch of Academy Award winners, and I was like, 'These guys are so overrated.'"
MacFarlane and Wahlberg also debuted the red band trailer for "Ted," which does a great job of setting up John's romance with his girlfriend. It also features plenty of heavy-duty wordplay, something that will immediately please "Family Guy" fans.
"He memorized all that," MacFarlane told Moviefone when asked about a scene where Wahlberg is forced to rattle off dozens of names in rapid succession. "I would be dead if I tried to memorize all that. He was like, 'Oh, no. I got it.'"
As for why MacFarlane decided to make "Ted" his first feature, instead of a "Family Guy" film, the director says it was a matter of needing a little repose from the characters.
"I thought a break from 'Family Guy' would be a good thing," he said. As for when fans can expect to see Peter Griffin and family on the big screen, MacFarlane says "eventually."
"We have an idea," he told Moviefone, "but it's sort of on the back-burner."
Seth MacFarlane, Mark Wahlberg Debut 'Ted' Footage
For his feature film directorial debut, Seth MacFarlane didn't play it safe by putting out a "Family Guy" movie; instead, he wrote an R-rated, live-action comedy-animation hybrid about a man and his talking teddy bear. In the packed Vimeo Theater inside the Austin Convention Center at SXSW on Sunday morning, MacFarlane and surprise-guest Mark Wahlberg unveiled the first public look at "Ted."
Out July 13, "Ted" follows John Bennett (Wahlberg), a Boston-bred man who, when he was a kid, wished that his teddy bear, Ted (voiced by MacFarlane), would come alive. Surprise! He did, and -- when the initial shock wears off -- he and John grow up to be besties-in-arms, smoking pot and watching "Flash Gordon" on the regular.
Unfortunately, John's girlfriend (Mila Kunis) isn't pleased with their co-dependent relationship, and John must be forced to mature -- much to the consternation of Ted.
MacFarlane and Wahlberg debuted the first eight-minutes of "Ted," which sets up the initial premise: that Ted can walk and talk. The funny prologue -- featuring "Family Guy" star Alex Borstein as John's mom -- wisely puts "Ted" in the real world; the living teddy bear is featured on news broadcasts around the country and even makes an appearance on "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson." When things shift to the present day, Wahlberg has an easy rapport with his foul-mouthed furry friend, something made all the more impressive since he was mostly acting to nothing.
"It's a very challenging role, in a lot of ways," MacFarlane said. "It's a comedy, but you're interacting with empty space. One of the great things when we finally got [the effects done], was that Mark was so good and so convincing. When we finally put the bear in, it felt so organic and so real. It would sink or swim on whether you believe these two guys were together."
MacFarlane would run lines with Wahlberg off-camera -- which no doubt helped the star get comfortable -- but no amount of line-reading could make a scene like John's hotel-room brawl with Ted work. The second clip of the presentation highlighted this scene, which comes across all the more impressive when you consider Wahlberg was fighting himself, a la Edward Norton in "Fight Club."
"The goal with that fight from the start was to make it as real and as raw as if two guys were fighting in one of the 'Bourne' movies," MacFarlane told Moviefone after the presentation. "Whatever Mark was tapping into, performance wise, while we were shooting this movie, is in full-force in that scene."
As for Wahlberg -- who said he would act opposite either a stuffed bear or "a stick with two dots on it" -- he welcomed not having to deal with any other co-stars.
"I absolutely fell in love with the idea of not working with actors," he said to laughs during the panel. "I just did a movie with a bunch of Academy Award winners, and I was like, 'These guys are so overrated.'"
MacFarlane and Wahlberg also debuted the red band trailer for "Ted," which does a great job of setting up John's romance with his girlfriend. It also features plenty of heavy-duty wordplay, something that will immediately please "Family Guy" fans.
"He memorized all that," MacFarlane told Moviefone when asked about a scene where Wahlberg is forced to rattle off dozens of names in rapid succession. "I would be dead if I tried to memorize all that. He was like, 'Oh, no. I got it.'"
As for why MacFarlane decided to make "Ted" his first feature, instead of a "Family Guy" film, the director says it was a matter of needing a little repose from the characters.
"I thought a break from 'Family Guy' would be a good thing," he said. As for when fans can expect to see Peter Griffin and family on the big screen, MacFarlane says "eventually."
"We have an idea," he told Moviefone, "but it's sort of on the back-burner."
Mark Wahlberg interviewed by The Guardian
Here is an interview Mark did with The Guardian (UK).
Mark Wahlberg: family man, business man, renaissance man
Mark Wahlberg has just got off a plane from Australia – and he does not want to do this interview. It shows in his limp handshake, his lack of eye contact, and in the way he punctuates our time with either a monosyllabic answer, or a comically protracted yawn.
All of which is fine – he's a jetlagged father of four, after all – if a little tedious. But then, Wahlberg must be used to tedious. Nearly every interview he's done since his remarkably sensitive breakout role in 1997's Boogie Nights has started with his shady past, and ended with a touching portrait of the young man as father. So the Guardian asks him straight: is there anything he's sick of speaking about?
"I'll let my interpreter answer that," he says dismissively, sinking into an armchair, leaning back and closing his eyes. His "interpreter" is Howard, an affable long-time friend with a severe speech impediment whom he's known since the early 90s. He's an odd choice of entourage; a cynic might suggest he's there for Wahlberg to genially employ as an occasional human shield against conversational topics he'd rather not delve into.
But quite why Wahlberg – named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in 2011 – should need any such protection is confusing. He's made it clear since his cocky, Entourage-style days as rapper Marky "brother of New Kid Donnie" Mark, that he doesn't much care what anyone thinks. And to be fair, why would he? Here's a man who beat the odds on a past filled with violent crime, jail time, drug-dealing and street hustling followed by redemption to become an A-list actor and heavyweight Hollywood TV producer. Frankly, I'd be taking a nap too.
Over the next 45 minutes, Wahlberg snaps out of his torpor only when the subject matter piques his interest. I ask about his children, and instantly, he's a different man; animated, alert and brimming with adoration.
"Look at this guy," he says, showing me his son Brendan. "He wants me to sleep in his little race-car bed, and he keeps watching to make sure I don't leave till he falls asleep."
Mark Wahlberg, family man – it's clear this is the role that comes easiest to him, and that the press obligations surrounding his work are nothing but distractions. A few weeks ago, a comment he made about 9/11 in a interview with Men's Journal ("If I was on that plane with my kids, it wouldn't have went down like it did") placed him in the line of media fire from hair-trigger patriots and the general outraged masses.
"I just don't understand that reaction," he says wearily. "Do I regret it? Yes. But it was clearly taken out of context. The journalist was asking a bunch of inappropriate questions about sex interspersed with more serious questions, and I was trying to articulate how far I would go to protect my family. It was just … nonsense."
Does he care what people think? "Not much at all. After the age of 40, who gives a shit? I want people to come see my films and enjoy them but at the end of the day you can't control what people think. You can only apologise, which I did. Listen – there's a lot of things I wish I hadn't said. This is not my favourite part of the job, as I think you probably can tell," he adds, with the wryest of smiles.
Playing it safe doesn't appear to be on his list when it comes to opening his mouth – he later makes a joke about being on cocaine, then tells me rather seriously, "You know I was kidding, right?" – but it's something of a disappointment that since his multi-layered, hugely charismatic portrayal of genitally blessed porn star Dirk Diggler in Boogie Nights, he's been widely more cautious with his roles – a big bag of heavily muscled cops, reformed bad boys, security guards and boxers. Which is not to say that some of them don't run a little deeper, like his deservedly Oscar-nominated turn as a foul-mouthed cop in The Departed or his extraordinary Micky Ward in The Fighter. But by and large, does he play it safe?
"I can always see something of myself in the characters I play. Sure, I enjoy playing just a straightforward guys' guy. I think that's what people expect and that's what people enjoy seeing me do," he says, neither irritated nor particularly interested in the comparison. "Why not? I have a lot of real-life experience with both cops and villains, so I channel that. I did The Departed, all the other guys were like, 'Let's go do some research', and I was like, 'For what?' Eighteen years of dealing with cops. I know how to act like one."
What film stars did he idolise when he was growing up? Here, Wahlberg doesn't hesitate.
"James Cagney, Steve McQueen, I loved all those guys. I grew up loving the movies but had no desire to be in them. I didn't think it was possible considering where I came from. I used to go to the movies with my dad. We saw Hard Times with Charles Bronson when I was seven and I remember thinking, 'Cool.' But I wasn't thinking, 'I wanna be a movie star'; I was thinking, 'I wanna be a bare-knuckle fighter like the guys in the movies.'"
The alpha-male fetish resolved, it's his emerging role as a credible producer of such hugely successful shows as Boardwalk Empire, In Treatment and latest movie Contraband that's genuinely intriguing. His first venture was 2004's Entourage, an enjoyably shallow comedy-drama about life in the fast lane for a young Hollywood actor and his friends. It was based loosely around Wahlberg's early days in Hollywood. "I don't want to give any details of my experiences. Take creative liberties, make something up," he says; he's far more interested in what the show has achieved for its stars than its over-analysed genesis.
"What I love about Entourage though, and what I love about producing in general is how it gives me the ability to put others in a position to do great work. Look at Jeremy Piven: he never had a place to showcase his abilities, till Entourage came along. He always had it in him, but he just needed that vehicle and I was able to provide it. It's a great thing to do."
His latest film, Contraband, is a perfectly enjoyable, if predictable, action thriller, adapted from the 2008 Icelandic film ReykjavÃk-Rotterdam. Wahlberg flexes familiarly as Chris, a reformed smuggler on one last job to protect his family; once again, hardly a stretch. What's striking about the film are its high-calibre stunts and effects, achieved on an impressively tight budget.
"A film like this would usually cost about $60m," Wahlberg says, with a notable glimmer of pride "But we had a great cast and crew, and we filmed it very much like an independent film, shot the whole thing in 40 days, for $25m. We did a lot of the stunt stuff ourselves. I don't mention that in an 'aren't we cool' way, I just liked that we did it because it saved money." I'm beginning see what it is about film that Wahlberg's truly passionate about. He's a good actor but he's a great businessman.
"I have a lot of other businesses outside film: property, wellbeing, and construction," he agrees. "Producing suits me because I have a business mind and a business sensibility. I was a street hustler. I did whatever it took. I sold whatever I could sell. I'm a good organiser."
As a man who revels in creative control, and has worked with everyone from Martin Scorsese to Tim Burton to Peter Jackson, he wants to direct, of course. "What would you like to direct?" I ask, and suddenly, he clams up. "Films," he says moodily, as though I'm asking if he's tidied his room; I'm half expecting him to add "Duh!" I roll my eyes, and he concedes this round of the game with a smile: "I enjoy all kinds of films, except musicals. When I find that particular story that I want to tell, I'll let everyone know."
Perhaps a move into comedy is next? For the first time, he's less surefooted in his approach.
"I wasn't exactly uncomfortable when I did my first comedy," he says thoughtfully. "I was just very aware of the risks; if you do a comedy that sucks and you suck in it then you won't get a chance to do it again." With typical savvy, he placed himself in the safe hands of Will Ferrell in The Other Guys, and Steve Carrell in Date Night, a film in which he maintained a state of shirtlessness at all times. A self-deprecating pastiche of his modelling days, I ask? And fair's fair: now it's his turn to roll his eyes. "What do you think?"
He's palpably excited about his upcoming film, Ted, directed by Family Guy's Seth MacFarlane, a project which sees him move beautifully from alpha to beta male, playing a grown man whose best friend is a malevolent talking teddy. I love the image but it's a struggle to see how it's something he's able to relate to from personal experience.
"I said I can always see something of myself in the characters I play, and you assume that means I can only play big tough guys," he says. "But look, here's this bullied little kid, a guy who has no friends and gets beat up a lot, and he makes his bear his best friend. It's a buddy movie. It's a childhood friendship that changes, and the character is this guy who grows into the man he needs to be for the people in his life. I was the youngest of nine kids. There's always something I can relate to. I don't always need to be beating someone up!"
"So you're definitely not a method actor?" I ask teasingly. At this, Wahlberg hoots with laughter.
"Let me tell you something," he says. "I was in a rehearsal for a movie that never got made with a very famous actor and director. And they decided to do this acting exercise. 'Think of water. Think of the colour blue. Think of a place that you used to go hide when you were a kid when you wanted to be alone.' I thought, 'This is a practical joke!' So I opened my eyes, and they were all just sobbing their hearts out! I was kind of in shock. And that's when I thought, 'OK, I guess I'm pretty lucky I have a lot of real-life experiences to draw my sad emotions from so I didn't have to think about where I wanted to 'be alone as a boy'. Give me a break."
He uses his best "insufferable ac-tor" voice for emphasis. And I realise that Ted is probably going to be very, very good; perhaps the dark and meaty role Dirk Diggler fans have been waiting for. Because even when he's jetlagged, spouting ill-advised platitudes, or being just plain stubborn, Mark Wahlberg's actually kind of funny.
Mark Wahlberg: family man, business man, renaissance man
Mark Wahlberg has just got off a plane from Australia – and he does not want to do this interview. It shows in his limp handshake, his lack of eye contact, and in the way he punctuates our time with either a monosyllabic answer, or a comically protracted yawn.
All of which is fine – he's a jetlagged father of four, after all – if a little tedious. But then, Wahlberg must be used to tedious. Nearly every interview he's done since his remarkably sensitive breakout role in 1997's Boogie Nights has started with his shady past, and ended with a touching portrait of the young man as father. So the Guardian asks him straight: is there anything he's sick of speaking about?
"I'll let my interpreter answer that," he says dismissively, sinking into an armchair, leaning back and closing his eyes. His "interpreter" is Howard, an affable long-time friend with a severe speech impediment whom he's known since the early 90s. He's an odd choice of entourage; a cynic might suggest he's there for Wahlberg to genially employ as an occasional human shield against conversational topics he'd rather not delve into.
But quite why Wahlberg – named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in 2011 – should need any such protection is confusing. He's made it clear since his cocky, Entourage-style days as rapper Marky "brother of New Kid Donnie" Mark, that he doesn't much care what anyone thinks. And to be fair, why would he? Here's a man who beat the odds on a past filled with violent crime, jail time, drug-dealing and street hustling followed by redemption to become an A-list actor and heavyweight Hollywood TV producer. Frankly, I'd be taking a nap too.
Over the next 45 minutes, Wahlberg snaps out of his torpor only when the subject matter piques his interest. I ask about his children, and instantly, he's a different man; animated, alert and brimming with adoration.
"Look at this guy," he says, showing me his son Brendan. "He wants me to sleep in his little race-car bed, and he keeps watching to make sure I don't leave till he falls asleep."
Mark Wahlberg, family man – it's clear this is the role that comes easiest to him, and that the press obligations surrounding his work are nothing but distractions. A few weeks ago, a comment he made about 9/11 in a interview with Men's Journal ("If I was on that plane with my kids, it wouldn't have went down like it did") placed him in the line of media fire from hair-trigger patriots and the general outraged masses.
"I just don't understand that reaction," he says wearily. "Do I regret it? Yes. But it was clearly taken out of context. The journalist was asking a bunch of inappropriate questions about sex interspersed with more serious questions, and I was trying to articulate how far I would go to protect my family. It was just … nonsense."
Does he care what people think? "Not much at all. After the age of 40, who gives a shit? I want people to come see my films and enjoy them but at the end of the day you can't control what people think. You can only apologise, which I did. Listen – there's a lot of things I wish I hadn't said. This is not my favourite part of the job, as I think you probably can tell," he adds, with the wryest of smiles.
Playing it safe doesn't appear to be on his list when it comes to opening his mouth – he later makes a joke about being on cocaine, then tells me rather seriously, "You know I was kidding, right?" – but it's something of a disappointment that since his multi-layered, hugely charismatic portrayal of genitally blessed porn star Dirk Diggler in Boogie Nights, he's been widely more cautious with his roles – a big bag of heavily muscled cops, reformed bad boys, security guards and boxers. Which is not to say that some of them don't run a little deeper, like his deservedly Oscar-nominated turn as a foul-mouthed cop in The Departed or his extraordinary Micky Ward in The Fighter. But by and large, does he play it safe?
"I can always see something of myself in the characters I play. Sure, I enjoy playing just a straightforward guys' guy. I think that's what people expect and that's what people enjoy seeing me do," he says, neither irritated nor particularly interested in the comparison. "Why not? I have a lot of real-life experience with both cops and villains, so I channel that. I did The Departed, all the other guys were like, 'Let's go do some research', and I was like, 'For what?' Eighteen years of dealing with cops. I know how to act like one."
What film stars did he idolise when he was growing up? Here, Wahlberg doesn't hesitate.
"James Cagney, Steve McQueen, I loved all those guys. I grew up loving the movies but had no desire to be in them. I didn't think it was possible considering where I came from. I used to go to the movies with my dad. We saw Hard Times with Charles Bronson when I was seven and I remember thinking, 'Cool.' But I wasn't thinking, 'I wanna be a movie star'; I was thinking, 'I wanna be a bare-knuckle fighter like the guys in the movies.'"
The alpha-male fetish resolved, it's his emerging role as a credible producer of such hugely successful shows as Boardwalk Empire, In Treatment and latest movie Contraband that's genuinely intriguing. His first venture was 2004's Entourage, an enjoyably shallow comedy-drama about life in the fast lane for a young Hollywood actor and his friends. It was based loosely around Wahlberg's early days in Hollywood. "I don't want to give any details of my experiences. Take creative liberties, make something up," he says; he's far more interested in what the show has achieved for its stars than its over-analysed genesis.
"What I love about Entourage though, and what I love about producing in general is how it gives me the ability to put others in a position to do great work. Look at Jeremy Piven: he never had a place to showcase his abilities, till Entourage came along. He always had it in him, but he just needed that vehicle and I was able to provide it. It's a great thing to do."
His latest film, Contraband, is a perfectly enjoyable, if predictable, action thriller, adapted from the 2008 Icelandic film ReykjavÃk-Rotterdam. Wahlberg flexes familiarly as Chris, a reformed smuggler on one last job to protect his family; once again, hardly a stretch. What's striking about the film are its high-calibre stunts and effects, achieved on an impressively tight budget.
"A film like this would usually cost about $60m," Wahlberg says, with a notable glimmer of pride "But we had a great cast and crew, and we filmed it very much like an independent film, shot the whole thing in 40 days, for $25m. We did a lot of the stunt stuff ourselves. I don't mention that in an 'aren't we cool' way, I just liked that we did it because it saved money." I'm beginning see what it is about film that Wahlberg's truly passionate about. He's a good actor but he's a great businessman.
"I have a lot of other businesses outside film: property, wellbeing, and construction," he agrees. "Producing suits me because I have a business mind and a business sensibility. I was a street hustler. I did whatever it took. I sold whatever I could sell. I'm a good organiser."
As a man who revels in creative control, and has worked with everyone from Martin Scorsese to Tim Burton to Peter Jackson, he wants to direct, of course. "What would you like to direct?" I ask, and suddenly, he clams up. "Films," he says moodily, as though I'm asking if he's tidied his room; I'm half expecting him to add "Duh!" I roll my eyes, and he concedes this round of the game with a smile: "I enjoy all kinds of films, except musicals. When I find that particular story that I want to tell, I'll let everyone know."
Perhaps a move into comedy is next? For the first time, he's less surefooted in his approach.
"I wasn't exactly uncomfortable when I did my first comedy," he says thoughtfully. "I was just very aware of the risks; if you do a comedy that sucks and you suck in it then you won't get a chance to do it again." With typical savvy, he placed himself in the safe hands of Will Ferrell in The Other Guys, and Steve Carrell in Date Night, a film in which he maintained a state of shirtlessness at all times. A self-deprecating pastiche of his modelling days, I ask? And fair's fair: now it's his turn to roll his eyes. "What do you think?"
He's palpably excited about his upcoming film, Ted, directed by Family Guy's Seth MacFarlane, a project which sees him move beautifully from alpha to beta male, playing a grown man whose best friend is a malevolent talking teddy. I love the image but it's a struggle to see how it's something he's able to relate to from personal experience.
"I said I can always see something of myself in the characters I play, and you assume that means I can only play big tough guys," he says. "But look, here's this bullied little kid, a guy who has no friends and gets beat up a lot, and he makes his bear his best friend. It's a buddy movie. It's a childhood friendship that changes, and the character is this guy who grows into the man he needs to be for the people in his life. I was the youngest of nine kids. There's always something I can relate to. I don't always need to be beating someone up!"
"So you're definitely not a method actor?" I ask teasingly. At this, Wahlberg hoots with laughter.
"Let me tell you something," he says. "I was in a rehearsal for a movie that never got made with a very famous actor and director. And they decided to do this acting exercise. 'Think of water. Think of the colour blue. Think of a place that you used to go hide when you were a kid when you wanted to be alone.' I thought, 'This is a practical joke!' So I opened my eyes, and they were all just sobbing their hearts out! I was kind of in shock. And that's when I thought, 'OK, I guess I'm pretty lucky I have a lot of real-life experiences to draw my sad emotions from so I didn't have to think about where I wanted to 'be alone as a boy'. Give me a break."
He uses his best "insufferable ac-tor" voice for emphasis. And I realise that Ted is probably going to be very, very good; perhaps the dark and meaty role Dirk Diggler fans have been waiting for. Because even when he's jetlagged, spouting ill-advised platitudes, or being just plain stubborn, Mark Wahlberg's actually kind of funny.
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Mark Wahlberg talks to Inside Hollywood
Mark talks about Contraband in this video from insidehollywood1:
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Mark Wahlberg and Teamsters
Here is an article from the Hollywood Reporter about Mark's plans for his next TV series idea called "Teamsters".
Mark Wahlberg Partners With A&E for Boston Teamsters Pilot
The actor's Closest to the Hole Productions is taking on an unscripted project about union members in his home town.
Mark Wahlberg is returning to familiar territory for his latest TV venture.
The actor, alongside Stephen Levinson, Kevin Harrison and Bill Thompson, has partnered with A&E for an unscripted pilot set in his native Boston. Currently titled Teamsters, the project will follow members of the city's Local 25 union.
"A&E strives to remain ahead of the curve while delivering first class auspices to our audience,” said A&E and BIO Channel president and GM Bob DeBitetto. "We’re so proud to collaborate with this group of producers and offer an authentic point of view from the unique characters this world provides."
The project comes from Wahlberg's Closest to the Hole productions, known best for scripted ventures Entourage and Boardwalk Empire, Levinson's Leverage Management and Thompson's Transition Productions.
"Closest to the Hole, Leverage and Transition Productions are excited to be collaborating with Bob DeBitetto and [EP] David McKillop at A&E," said Levinson. "We believe A&E is the perfect venue to create a cutting-edge show that promises to be like nothing else on television."
Touting the Whalberg's familiarity with the world of the series, a release says Teamsters will be set in the real-life world that served as the backdrop for films such as The Fighter and The Departed.
Mark Wahlberg Partners With A&E for Boston Teamsters Pilot
The actor's Closest to the Hole Productions is taking on an unscripted project about union members in his home town.
Mark Wahlberg is returning to familiar territory for his latest TV venture.
The actor, alongside Stephen Levinson, Kevin Harrison and Bill Thompson, has partnered with A&E for an unscripted pilot set in his native Boston. Currently titled Teamsters, the project will follow members of the city's Local 25 union.
"A&E strives to remain ahead of the curve while delivering first class auspices to our audience,” said A&E and BIO Channel president and GM Bob DeBitetto. "We’re so proud to collaborate with this group of producers and offer an authentic point of view from the unique characters this world provides."
The project comes from Wahlberg's Closest to the Hole productions, known best for scripted ventures Entourage and Boardwalk Empire, Levinson's Leverage Management and Thompson's Transition Productions.
"Closest to the Hole, Leverage and Transition Productions are excited to be collaborating with Bob DeBitetto and [EP] David McKillop at A&E," said Levinson. "We believe A&E is the perfect venue to create a cutting-edge show that promises to be like nothing else on television."
Touting the Whalberg's familiarity with the world of the series, a release says Teamsters will be set in the real-life world that served as the backdrop for films such as The Fighter and The Departed.
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Pain and Gain Filming in Miami Soon
An article from Hollywood Reporter reports that Pain and Gain will begin filming in Miami later in March.
The movie also stars Dwayne Johnson, Ed Harris, Tony Shaloub, Anthony Mackie and Bar Paly.
The movie also stars Dwayne Johnson, Ed Harris, Tony Shaloub, Anthony Mackie and Bar Paly.
Saturday, March 3, 2012
Mark Wahlberg's interview with GQ Magazine (UK)
Mark was interviewed by GQ Magazine (UK)!. He talks about his hangover cures, his new ideas for a TV series, what he cooks, his exercise recommendations and more:
Mark Wahlberg has a hangover. It's late morning in London's Claridge's hotel and it's clear the Oscar-nominated actor, mega producer and business mogul formerly known as "Marky Mark" has had a late night. Still, we can't blame him for celebrating success: Wahlberg is now one of Hollywood's foremost producers, keen to see his new smuggling thriller Contraband follow the success of both his TV shows (Entourage, How To Make It In America and Boardwalk Empire) and films (The Fighter). His rapidly expanding business portfolio includes his brother Paul's Boston burger joint Wahlburgers, a stake in water company AquaHydrate and even a venture to take American football to India. We sat down with Wahlberg to talk about his former drug smuggling days, his best business advice and whether Justin Bieber is his Hollywood heir...
GQ.com: We hear you had a big night last night. What's your hangover cure?
Mark Wahlberg: It's going around town! [laughing] Yeah, we had a nice dinner and I drank a lot of wine. Obviously you want to drink a lot of water before you go to bed and drink a lot of Alkalized AquaHydrate PH9 because it has all the electrolytes and organic minerals you need. Not only will it cure your hangover, but it'll put a little lead in the pencil, so you don't need a blue pill.
You play a smuggler in Contraband - is there anything you like to import?
Now that I'm married and have children, my exciting days of smuggling stuff are over and behind me. When I was younger we used to transport our own medicinal marijuana from country to country, but those days are over. Right, Sarah? [winks at his publicist] No, to be honest I don't have a tendency to go out and shop. Actually, when I go to Ireland - I've never been - I would like to bring back some Claddagh rings for my children.
Where do you go for suits?
I'm fortunate enough that when I do have to dress up, I go to Armani in Beverley Hills. My watch? It's a bling bling Timex, baby. It has a light and everything.
What's your best piece of business advice?
I'm fortunate enough to have worked with some very talented people. Everybody has a different approach: some people like to beat people down, crack the whip and really drive people into the ground, but I find that by encouraging people and doing it in a positive way you really get the best results.
After Entourage, How To Make It In America and Boardwalk Empire, are there any other great ideas for man TV you're hoping to make?
We're actually delving into the reality TV world now - well, more docudrama - about a friend of mine called Nacho Extreme, who is an extreme eater. He and Johnny Drama [Wahlberg's friend Johnny Alves] are going to change the face of television. He eats wood, lobster shells, porterhouse bones... He's not eating food: there's no fun in that. He's eating impossible things. We're also doing a show about the port of LA, which is the second biggest port in the United States and I think the fourth biggest port in the world. It will follow all the law enforcement that is there, and all the stuff that goes on - it's fascinating.
What's the best thing you can cook?
I'd probably stick a chicken in the rotisserie machine. You've got to put it on the timer based on the weight of the chicken, then you put it in and it just turns. I can make eggs, things like that. Anything for the kids. I make a hell of a cereal.
What's your key workout move?
It's better to focus on flexibility and core stuff. The whole lifting weights and getting as big as possible is just not a good idea: thin is in. You want to stay flexible and work out smart so you can stay healthy in the long run.
You're working on a basketball film with Justin Bieber. Given you started in music and then moved into film, is he the new Mark Wahlberg?
I think Justin can have a real career in the business. I remember when I first mentioned that I wanted to be an actor and take it seriously I was laughed at. This movie is the kind of thing he can really shine in. If he wants a career, you have to make the right decisions and have the right people in your life. You've got to know you're in it for the long haul. But he seems very focused and very determined, and I think the movie is going to surprise a lot of people.
Mark Wahlberg has a hangover. It's late morning in London's Claridge's hotel and it's clear the Oscar-nominated actor, mega producer and business mogul formerly known as "Marky Mark" has had a late night. Still, we can't blame him for celebrating success: Wahlberg is now one of Hollywood's foremost producers, keen to see his new smuggling thriller Contraband follow the success of both his TV shows (Entourage, How To Make It In America and Boardwalk Empire) and films (The Fighter). His rapidly expanding business portfolio includes his brother Paul's Boston burger joint Wahlburgers, a stake in water company AquaHydrate and even a venture to take American football to India. We sat down with Wahlberg to talk about his former drug smuggling days, his best business advice and whether Justin Bieber is his Hollywood heir...
GQ.com: We hear you had a big night last night. What's your hangover cure?
Mark Wahlberg: It's going around town! [laughing] Yeah, we had a nice dinner and I drank a lot of wine. Obviously you want to drink a lot of water before you go to bed and drink a lot of Alkalized AquaHydrate PH9 because it has all the electrolytes and organic minerals you need. Not only will it cure your hangover, but it'll put a little lead in the pencil, so you don't need a blue pill.
You play a smuggler in Contraband - is there anything you like to import?
Now that I'm married and have children, my exciting days of smuggling stuff are over and behind me. When I was younger we used to transport our own medicinal marijuana from country to country, but those days are over. Right, Sarah? [winks at his publicist] No, to be honest I don't have a tendency to go out and shop. Actually, when I go to Ireland - I've never been - I would like to bring back some Claddagh rings for my children.
Where do you go for suits?
I'm fortunate enough that when I do have to dress up, I go to Armani in Beverley Hills. My watch? It's a bling bling Timex, baby. It has a light and everything.
What's your best piece of business advice?
I'm fortunate enough to have worked with some very talented people. Everybody has a different approach: some people like to beat people down, crack the whip and really drive people into the ground, but I find that by encouraging people and doing it in a positive way you really get the best results.
After Entourage, How To Make It In America and Boardwalk Empire, are there any other great ideas for man TV you're hoping to make?
We're actually delving into the reality TV world now - well, more docudrama - about a friend of mine called Nacho Extreme, who is an extreme eater. He and Johnny Drama [Wahlberg's friend Johnny Alves] are going to change the face of television. He eats wood, lobster shells, porterhouse bones... He's not eating food: there's no fun in that. He's eating impossible things. We're also doing a show about the port of LA, which is the second biggest port in the United States and I think the fourth biggest port in the world. It will follow all the law enforcement that is there, and all the stuff that goes on - it's fascinating.
What's the best thing you can cook?
I'd probably stick a chicken in the rotisserie machine. You've got to put it on the timer based on the weight of the chicken, then you put it in and it just turns. I can make eggs, things like that. Anything for the kids. I make a hell of a cereal.
What's your key workout move?
It's better to focus on flexibility and core stuff. The whole lifting weights and getting as big as possible is just not a good idea: thin is in. You want to stay flexible and work out smart so you can stay healthy in the long run.
You're working on a basketball film with Justin Bieber. Given you started in music and then moved into film, is he the new Mark Wahlberg?
I think Justin can have a real career in the business. I remember when I first mentioned that I wanted to be an actor and take it seriously I was laughed at. This movie is the kind of thing he can really shine in. If he wants a career, you have to make the right decisions and have the right people in your life. You've got to know you're in it for the long haul. But he seems very focused and very determined, and I think the movie is going to surprise a lot of people.
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Mark Wahlberg Article from The Huffington Post UK
Here is an article about Mark from The Huffington Post UK:
"I'm going to play Gary Glitter," says Mark Wahlberg.
The Contraband star is sitting in a suite in Claridge's Hotel in London, next to a man called Howard who was, he says, the shamed pop star's manager. Wahlberg is talking about which role he'd like to play next, having made his mark in Hollywood playing a roll call of tough-men, including his acclaimed portrayal of pumped-up boxer "Irish" Micky Ward in The Fighter.
As his friend lets out an involuntary "oh no" at Wahlberg's Glitter gag, the enigmatic star quickly clarifies: "No, not really." Before adding: "I met Howard when Gary kicked him out of the house and I took him in… no, no it's all in fun."
So if he doesn't want to play the disgraced musician and convicted pedophile - what does the former rapper - then known as Marky Mark - ex-Calvin Klein model-turned-actor and producer want to tackle next?
"I just try to find new things that excite me and that I think people will enjoy watching me play," he answers, less confusingly.
Wahlberg's latest action flick Contraband sees him take on the role of a reformed drug smuggler. His likeable but hard character, Chris Farraday, works as a security alarm installer whose quiet life in New Orleans with wife Kate (played by Kate Beckinsale) is thrown into disarray when her brother's drug run goes awry dragging his family into a mob hunt.
Contraband's already a Box Office hit in America, taking $24m (£15.7m) in its opening week. What does Wahlberg think has attracted people to it?
"It's an action movie but it's also character-driven and plot-driven and I think that's what people were really excited about. They don't always do that in action movies."
The film is a remake of Icelandic film Reykjavik-Rotterdam, which Wahlberg says he "loved", however, he makes it clear Contraband is no carbon copy: "We did our own thing and kind of Americanised it, but the same guy that starred in the original and produced it also directed ours. I wouldn't say it's better - it's different, we tried to make it our own while also staying true to the original."
There are lots of tense, edge-of-your-seat moments in the action thriller, but one that was particularly difficult to watch involves Kate Beckinsale being buried alive, wrapped in plastic, while being covered in cement.
"That was her first day of shooting, talk about chucking her right into it. It was freezing cold, she is such a trooper getting right in there and doing it.
"It wasn't a dummy she got in there, when you weren't seeing her, it wasn't her in there but when I'm pulling her out and all that stuff, that's really her."
Although Wahlberg said he hasn't "really thought about" a sequel to Contraband, the film has inspired him to make a docudrama about the Port of LA. He explains, "it follows all the different law enforcement agencies that are there and trying to control some sort of order in this crazy world, with the container ships coming in out."
Wahlberg has been fortunate to have success as both an actor and a producer - his Hollywood comedy-drama Entourage ran for eight seasons and was nominated for 24 Primetime Emmy Awards and 14 Golden Globes - thus he's happy not to have to choose between being in front of or behind the camera.
"I like doing it all, it's really beneficial when you're producing a film that you're acting in, as you maintain a lot more creative control and you can fire people.
"I can't even fire an assistant. I have fired but I've rehired. I feel bad after."
The question on his fans' lips is usually: "When's Entourage the movie coming?" Wahlberg's not giving much away, but he does tease: "We're just waiting for the screen play."
"I'm going to play Gary Glitter," says Mark Wahlberg.
The Contraband star is sitting in a suite in Claridge's Hotel in London, next to a man called Howard who was, he says, the shamed pop star's manager. Wahlberg is talking about which role he'd like to play next, having made his mark in Hollywood playing a roll call of tough-men, including his acclaimed portrayal of pumped-up boxer "Irish" Micky Ward in The Fighter.
As his friend lets out an involuntary "oh no" at Wahlberg's Glitter gag, the enigmatic star quickly clarifies: "No, not really." Before adding: "I met Howard when Gary kicked him out of the house and I took him in… no, no it's all in fun."
So if he doesn't want to play the disgraced musician and convicted pedophile - what does the former rapper - then known as Marky Mark - ex-Calvin Klein model-turned-actor and producer want to tackle next?
"I just try to find new things that excite me and that I think people will enjoy watching me play," he answers, less confusingly.
Wahlberg's latest action flick Contraband sees him take on the role of a reformed drug smuggler. His likeable but hard character, Chris Farraday, works as a security alarm installer whose quiet life in New Orleans with wife Kate (played by Kate Beckinsale) is thrown into disarray when her brother's drug run goes awry dragging his family into a mob hunt.
Contraband's already a Box Office hit in America, taking $24m (£15.7m) in its opening week. What does Wahlberg think has attracted people to it?
"It's an action movie but it's also character-driven and plot-driven and I think that's what people were really excited about. They don't always do that in action movies."
The film is a remake of Icelandic film Reykjavik-Rotterdam, which Wahlberg says he "loved", however, he makes it clear Contraband is no carbon copy: "We did our own thing and kind of Americanised it, but the same guy that starred in the original and produced it also directed ours. I wouldn't say it's better - it's different, we tried to make it our own while also staying true to the original."
There are lots of tense, edge-of-your-seat moments in the action thriller, but one that was particularly difficult to watch involves Kate Beckinsale being buried alive, wrapped in plastic, while being covered in cement.
"That was her first day of shooting, talk about chucking her right into it. It was freezing cold, she is such a trooper getting right in there and doing it.
"It wasn't a dummy she got in there, when you weren't seeing her, it wasn't her in there but when I'm pulling her out and all that stuff, that's really her."
Although Wahlberg said he hasn't "really thought about" a sequel to Contraband, the film has inspired him to make a docudrama about the Port of LA. He explains, "it follows all the different law enforcement agencies that are there and trying to control some sort of order in this crazy world, with the container ships coming in out."
Wahlberg has been fortunate to have success as both an actor and a producer - his Hollywood comedy-drama Entourage ran for eight seasons and was nominated for 24 Primetime Emmy Awards and 14 Golden Globes - thus he's happy not to have to choose between being in front of or behind the camera.
"I like doing it all, it's really beneficial when you're producing a film that you're acting in, as you maintain a lot more creative control and you can fire people.
"I can't even fire an assistant. I have fired but I've rehired. I feel bad after."
The question on his fans' lips is usually: "When's Entourage the movie coming?" Wahlberg's not giving much away, but he does tease: "We're just waiting for the screen play."
Mark Wahlberg interview with G4
Mark Wahlberg and his Contraband co-stars talk about about the movie on G4:
Mark Wahlberg and Headhunters
Mark is considering working on a remake of the Norwegian movie "Headhunters". Here are some articles about it.
cinemablend.com.
slashfilm.com
fusedfilm.com
comingsoon.net
movie-moron.com
Here is the trailer for the original version:
cinemablend.com.
slashfilm.com
fusedfilm.com
comingsoon.net
movie-moron.com
Here is the trailer for the original version:
Photos of Mark Wahlberg in Spain
Mark did some promotion for Contraband at the Hotel Villamagna in Spain. Here is a photo:
Click here to view more photos!
Click here to view more photos!
Possible New Mark Wahlberg Movie
Mark Wahlberg is in talks with director Peter Berg to be in a movie based on the book "Lone Survivor" by Marcus Luttrell.
Click here to read the article from deadline.com.
Click here to read the article from deadline.com.
Watch Mark Wahlberg's Interview with ABC News Australia
Mark talks about making changes in his life, different movie genres and budgets, Entourage and more in an interview with ABC News Australia.
Click here to watch!
Click here to watch!
Listen to Mark Wahlberg on 98FM in Dublin
Here is a clip of Mark Wahlberg on 98FM in Dublin (interview starts about a minute into this clip):
Click here to listen!
Click here to listen!
Watch Mark Wahlberg on The Graham Norton Show (Full episode)
Here is the full episode of Mark on The Graham Norton Show. He is interviewed along with Minnie Driver and Mark Watson. They talk about their kids, his entourage, Contraband, upcoming movie plans, tattoos, and more:
Click here to watch!
Click here to watch!
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