Actor Patton Oswalt on the red carpet prior to the Palm Springs International Film Festival awards gala. / Denise Goolsby, The Desert Sun
One of the best things about the annual Palm Springs International Film Festival is the personal face time one can get with actors and filmmakers.
Here are a few memorable exchanges from this year's festival:
High school fallout
During the Variety brunch on Jan. 8 honoring Charlize Theron, her “Young Adult” co-star Patton Oswalt discussed the issue of bullying in schools and high school in general.
Oswalt plays Matt Freehauf in “Young Adult,” a man who was permanently disabled after being jumped by a group of boys in high school because they thought he was gay.
When asked if all the news about bullying in school — particularly the bullying of gay students — had an impact on his performance, Oswalt said, “It resonated a lot, but not in the way I thought it would.
“What hit me was that in high school, the problem with high school is that you're in high school. Everything is cranked up for the bullies and the bullied.”
But, as the film tries to express, Oswalt said many of those moments don't mean much in the grand scheme of life.
“You literally graduate high school and a month later run into someone and go, ‘What was that all about? I'm sorry, dude.' It's a heightened, unrealistic environment, and you're seeing in ‘Young Adult' the fallout of that,” he said. “The fallout of people realizing: ‘God, that really didn't mean anything.'”
Playing it straight
Director Matt Piedmont was honored as one of Variety's “10 Directors to Watch.”
In the courtyard of The Parker, Piedmont chatted about his upcoming Spanish-language film, “Casa de mi Padre.”
“Everything is played completely straight, although it is kind of an out-there movie,” Piedmont said, laughing.
The film, which hits theaters March 16, features Diego Luna and Will Ferrell. Piedmont describes it as “an homage to tele-novellas and Spaghetti Westerns.”
Ferrell was so determined to star in it that he took two months to learn Spanish — a far cry from his role as Ron Burgundy in “Anchor Man” who proclaimed to his dog, Baxter: “You know I don't speak Spanish.”
“Yes, people keep saying it's hilarious because of that point and now he's in a movie completely in Spanish. It was kind of like tying his hands behind his back,” Piedmont said. “But he was amazing.”
SEALing the deal
Mike “Mouse” McCoy, a stuntman-turned-filmmaker, co-directed “Act of Valor” with Scott Waugh. The film features active duty Navy SEALS in what McCoy calls the “first authentic action film.”
“It's a global action film that really dives into the heart and soul and brotherhood of the SEAL community and the sacrifices they've made over the last 10 years,” McCoy said. “It delivers a lot of a bang-bang as well.”
While a seemingly apropos tribute to the team that killed Osama bin Laden, Waugh emphasized that the movie was four years in the making and was fully completed by the time of bin Laden's death.
“The movie really is a representation of all the troops, we just tell the story through the Navy SEALS,” Waugh said.
McCoy and Waugh said the idea was to remind people of the sacrifices made by military service men and women.
“We just really want people to be thankful and aware of these guys,” McCoy added. “That's really what it's all about.”
Mariecar Mendoza is a reporter for The Desert Sun. She can be reached at (760) 778-4669 or mariecar.mendoza@thedesertsun.com. Follow her on Twitter @TDSMarMendoza.
