Gigantic

• Gigantic - Exclusive Interview with Ed Asner

  Published on: April 2, 2009

  Hey Movie Fans! MovieSet was lucky enough to get an exclusive interview with ED ASNER talking about his new movie "Gigantic".

  The movie is about a 28 year-old salesman at a high-end Swedish mattress company. The afterthought child to elderly parents (ED ASNER, JANE ALEXANDER), and the youngest son in a trio of successful brothers including a shady oil man and a surgeon, Brian is searching for his place in the world. Unfulfilled by his work he spends a good portion of his day pursuing his goal of someday adopting a baby from China. He gets swept up in a romance with the lovely but misguided Harriet Lolly when she comes in to his store one day and falls asleep on one of the beds. To win her over, he must compete with her bear of a father, Al Lolly, an art-collecting loudmouth with a bad back and deep pockets.

  Check out the transcript from the interview.

  Ed: Hi, how are ya?

  Eric: Doing great.  We saw the film Gigantic and it was quite a wonderful film.

  Ed: Thank you, that's a nice comment to hear.

  Eric: It's not often you see a first time director have such a visual hand on things.

  Ed: Yeah, he's a master commercial director and a lot of directors out there have come up that way.

  Eric: What initially drew you to the project?

  Ed: I like the character, I like the setting, I like the cast. I like being wanted. And I had nothing better to do with my time.

  Shaun: I find that hard to believe but we'll go with it.

  Ed: No, it's true. When you get to be my age they're not beating down your door.

  Shaun: (laughs) It was a great cast. How did you find working with Paul Dano and Zooey Deschanel.

  Ed: He was lovely, he was not coasting on wings of power from his triumph in There Will Be Blood. He was very interested, very thoughtful, very intent on finding what he wanted to do and how to do it. He maintained his cool under all exigencies and I found him very charming.

  Eric: With acting you can always see the intelligence behind someone's eyes and that reads very well with Paul.

  Ed: Yeah, that's very true. He just came out in another movie did you see that? I haven't seen it.

  Shaun: Which one is that?

  Ed: It's a small movie. I don't know, I don't retain any of the information.

  Shaun: I'll have to look at it.

  Ed: You guys are in the middle of it, you should know automatically what I'm talking about.

  Shaun: We should.

  Ed: In other words you disappoint me (laughs).

  Eric: (laughs) You've worked on some high profile projects like Elf. What do you find more satisfying? The high profile projects or smaller films?

  Ed: Well, I don't think Elf was a large production was it? I was delighted in how nicely it turned out. It was two weeks of wonderful easy work on that show... There's really no difference, with Gigantic we had a certain number of interiors. Nothing lavish surrounding us. There was the scene looking for the shrooms. I was just lucky to traverse the ground as well as I did.

  Eric: That was an interesting scene in the movie because I was watching it and I thought 'Am I watching Ed Asner on mushrooms?' I would have never expected that.

  Ed: I like to keep them guessing, you know what I mean? The best scene in the film to me was Jane Alexander on the balcony with Zooey and that was a beautiful scene. And I saw finally what the hell they talk about when they talk about Jane Alexander.

  Shaun: Well, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today.

  Ed: Very nice talking to you guys. Be nice to me!

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• Gigantic - Exclusive Interview with Director Matt Aselton

  Published on: April 2, 2009

  Hey Guys, MovieSet is back again with another interview from the cast and crew of Gigantic. This time its with the films Director, Matt Aselton.
  
  Enjoy!

  MovieSet: It seems like a very personal project, is this something you wrote a long time ago or is this a fairly fresh project?

  Matt Aselton: I think we finished the screenplay in 2006 so not that long ago as far as these things go.  It's something we've been thinking about for a long time. But it's certainly a personal project, I definitely wanted to write the first thing that I shot.

  Eric: And as your first feature, that's an incredible cast to get. Paul Dano, Zooey Deschanel, John Goodman, how exciting was that for you to get that ensemble cast together?

  Matt Aselton: Yeah, I think as we went we got Paul first. I met with Paul a long time ago in New York city and we talked about the screenplay a lot. Paul's a very smart guy, he had great things to add to it so that was great. I think that the scene at the time was Paul was sort of becoming a known actor, a great actor. John Goodman is somebody that people like films like Barton Fink. The Big Lebowski, reel them off, are totally excited about and it started snowballing and I think on the stength of those guys and Zooey and Ed and Gene I feel like it was kind of Paul signed on and it rolled down a hill and picked up awesome people. So, wildly fortunate, you know it's a small movie and we don't have the luxuries that those people are used to so we're super fortunate to have them.

  Shaun: You were meeting with Paul while you were still writing it?

  Matt: We had finished it and we he had read it and then he went off to Texas and he got a big role in Paul Anderson's movie and then we met and he had a really subtle take on the character and it's sort of a subtle character. I had met with a couple of actors before but I think his impression of it was right and I think that his temperament was right for it. I also happened to love him for  years I thought he was terrific in L.I.E. It's an amazing movie he made when he was thirteen with Brian Cox on Long Island and so I remember thinking what a unique face and what a unique voice he was and as fate would have it we sat down and had a three hour breakfast together and aside from the script we talked about the films that we liked.

  Eric: One of the things that I liked was the visual aesthetic of the film. A lot of long still shots that let the story tell itself. It's a refreshing change from the motion sickness inducing Michael Bay effect, but as someone who wrote and directed the film is that something you wrote into the script or after it was completed?

  Matt: No, it certainly wasn't written into the script. My cinematographer is someone I worked with before. I did a lot of commercials for years which I'm so grateful for. It's sort of like meeting my cinematographer Peter Donahuge and sitting and talking for years on end on things that we liked. That was a lot of what we talked about, which was liking to be further away and sitting in doorways and spying on people as opposed to presenting something. It's hard, I guess you would call it a romance, or a comedy. We just wanted to make sure there was some romance to it  so it wasn't just trying to be funny. I think being a little backed up and longer on the lens and watching people is more alluring than showing you people at face value and shoving it down your throat. That's why it was there. The aesthetic of the film was planned but just not in the script.

  Eric: Cool

  Shaun: Well, we enjoyed the movie and hope it does well.

  Matt: No, thank you for taking interest in it. I'm sure I could bore the shit out of you for hours but I won't do that. (laughs)

  Eric: Thanks for taking the time out to chat.

  Matt: Thanks very much, bye.

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