Interview

The director's surprising new biopic of America's outgoing president provides a searing look into the psyches of not one but two polarizing, complicated men: George W. Bush and Oliver Stone.  ARTICLE PUBLISHED: 11/25/08

Some people just don't fit the -formula. But then the formula seems somewhat antithetical to what Charlie Kaufman does. As a screenwriter, he is best known for his two mind-bending collaborations with director Spike Jonze, Being John Malkovich (1999) and Adaptation (2002), and another pair of colorfully inventive films with -director Michel Gondry, Human Nature (2001) and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004). But the 50-year-old Kaufman seems to have saved his trippiest project for himself: His directorial debut, the recently released Synecdoche, New York, stars Philip Seymour Hoffman as a theater director whose autonomic functions are, one by one, beginning to shut down as he contends with both his cast and the women in his life, and as he struggles to build a life-size replica of Manhattan as part of his new play.  ARTICLE PUBLISHED: 11/25/08

A former child model-he posed professionally from ages 12 to 15 ("when I stopped looking like a girl")-Pattinson has been dubbed "the next Jude Law" in the British press. "I don't really see the similarity," he says. One opportunity to break out comes via next year's Little Ashes, a Spanish drama in which Pattinson stars as the young Salvador Dalí.  ARTICLE PUBLISHED: 11/25/08

Seven years ago, he played James Dean in a television biopic, tinting his hair and squinting his eyes to Rebel Without a Cause-like perfection. Ever since, the temptation has been to peg him as a good-looking young man felled by the moody blues. while it's a fact of life that no one can ever really know what lies beneath the surface of another, the Internet can help narrow the field of possibilities. Lo and behold, Generalissimo James Edward Franco: a merry prankster, a slayer of hearts, a wooer of minds, and the latest onscreen love interest of Sean Penn.  ARTICLE PUBLISHED: 11/25/08

Chinese director Wong Kar Wai and Australian-born cinematographer Christopher Doyle collaborated for the first time nearly two decades ago on the Hong Kong cinema classic Days of Being Wild (1990).  ARTICLE PUBLISHED: 11/25/08

Rarely does an actor find work through an aggressive letter-writing campaign. But that's pretty much how it happened for 23-year-old British newcomer Carey Mulligan. "I had no idea how to become an actor," Mulligan confesses. "So when I was 16, I'd write letters to people like Kenneth Branagh and ask for advice."  ARTICLE PUBLISHED: 11/25/08

Although a certain nebbishy auteur has come to stand as the paradigm of the New York director, there are arguably two other candidates well suited for that honor. Martin Scorsese and Spike Lee were not only both raised in the city, but they've built a close friendship while comparing notes over the years.  ARTICLE PUBLISHED: 11/25/08

On paper, actor Anthony Mackie and rap icon Tupac Shakur couldn't be more different: Mackie is an up-and-coming Hollywood star who grew up in middle-class New -Orleans and is doing films with greats like Spike Lee and Clint Eastwood; Tupac was a gangsta rapper who was raised by a drug-addicted mother and vilified by mainstream America. The upcoming biopic Notorious, about Tupac's onetime friend and, later, greatest enemy, Notorious B.I.G., exposes the stereotypes surrounding the early hip-hop scene. But the film also shows what a brilliant shape-shifter Mackie is.  ARTICLE PUBLISHED: 11/25/08

At Interview magazine, we occasionally stage interviews in front of a live audience. The following took place on September 16, 2008, at the Museum of Modern Art, in New York City. We would like to thank director Spike Jonze and musician Thurston Moore for participating, as well as the audience members who showed up to partake.  ARTICLE PUBLISHED: 11/25/08

Rafi Gavron's breakthrough performance came in Breaking and Entering, the 2006 drama from the late Anthony Minghella in which the actor relied heavily on his gazelle-like physicality to play an agile thief. But it's the 19-year-old's role in the new comedy Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist, a joyride through the musical heart of Manhattan's Lower East Side, which just might make him a star.  ARTICLE PUBLISHED: 11/25/08