Tag Archives: Comic-Con 2010

Garrett Hedlund – Tron: Legacy

Garrett Hedlund: “It’s just such a privilege. When I first had my very first meeting with Joseph Kosinski, the director, and Sean Bailey, the producer, they showed me the video effects footage and to me it’s really nerve-wracking to ever take any meeting on a sort of blockbuster kind of vehicle, something that’s so vast. It was never kind of anything that I was comfortable in doing. I was always comfortable in being a supporting role with great people that I could learn from. Then this, having to be there every day all day was my very first experience. But being there every day with Jeff Bridges and Olivia Wilde and Joseph Kosinski it was like we became such a wonderful sort of little family. It’s the greatest experience I’ve ever had filming, you know? And also within this world… Now that we get to look back and see it – at that point it was just a bunch of blue screen and bright lights – and now seeing what they’re accumulating into it, my god I’m so proud to be a part of it.”

What was that set like? What was it like every day on the set for you?

Garrett Hedlund: “See, like this set, it wasn’t all just blue screen all the time. We had sets like this to be able to work off of. In this particular set, me and Olivia actually have one big sort of battle on this. The set is about a third of the size that it actually was, but if you look at it you see the dimensions of it and you see where the director Joseph Kosinski’s mind is in the world of architecture. And you get to see how unique and how this sort of really never been done before in terms of visually, in terms of the specifics. He’s very specific and he’s very precise in his mind in terms of… He’s an incredible director and for the world to see the work that he’s put into this, and also from Eric Barba and the whole team down at Digital Domain who did the work on Benjamin Button and others, it’s just an incredible feat and accomplishment. I’m just so excited to see it myself, you know, because I haven’t seen much of it. But any little bit of it that I do see gives me the goosebumps.”

Talk about playing Jeff Bridges’ son. That’s pretty major.

Garrett Hedlund: “Yeah. Well it is because I’d always looked up to Jeff so much, you know, as an actor. I’d always looked at his films for inspiration and as an example of how to be if I were to get roles. Just his uniqueness and how there are no rules, and how you can go from here to there and all the colors of the rainbow that he deals with between scenes. Especially now and being across from him and dealing with these scenes together, it’s such a growing process for me. It seems almost unfair because I feel so lucky to be a part of it and to be able to have this experience with Jeff and Joseph Kosinski who’s probably going to be the next greatest director.”

I couldn’t post the video at the moment but you can check it out here!

”For the first two days it was like it was Comi-Tron and indeed, Tron: Legacy is a big deal, was a big deal at the convention, and generated even more positive buzz after its 3rd appearance in a row, 5 months before the film finally hits theatres. Jacek and I saw the trailer before Inception and he leaned over to me and whispered – that is going to be SICK in 3D. It’s something about video game memories, they turn even the most unengaged movie-goer into an enthusiasts.

On screen he does nothing for me. Fair enough because Garrett Hedlund shotTron: Legacy last year. Perhaps if I’d seen him in person last year I would have the same reaction. As it is, when I watch the trailer, I’m not feeling much. Hedlund live however, well, that’s something else, which makes it more inconvenient as far as a fix is concerned, sure, but I actually don’t mind this, the fact that as a real authentic human being he actually pops.

We were at the Tron media event inside an empty retail space they’d converted into video arcade, with a passageway that opened up to a tricked out cave made to look like the nightclub run by Michael Sheen in the movie. They brought in Jeff Bridges first. They brought in Garrett Hedlund last. I was over it at this point. It was early in the morning, I hadn’t eaten, I couldn’t get a wifi signal on my laptop, my blog was behind, I wanted to bang off these interviews and get the f-ck out.

Then he emerged from the tunnel right beside me.

Hedlund is tall for Hollywood. He was taller than everyone in his entourage. That’s the first thing. The second is that he’s leaned out. In person he’s lanky, and his face is much more angled and carved, a sharp nose, sharp jaw, really great gait. I mean, that’s why Brad Pitt is more than his head, right? Hedlund holds his shoulders in a chill mid-slouch without looking like he has bad posture, and the hands, rubbing the back of his neck during interviews when he’s thinking about something, and a great gravelly voice with a sliiigght twang that sounds great when he laughs… it was on.

He’s not pretty either. I wouldn’t say the kid is in any danger of joining the elf boys Crawford, Efron, Pattinson – Hedlund’s mouth can look f-cked up in some shots, there’s a little Jeremy Renner happening with his expressions sometimes, and that works for him too. It’s worked enough to get him from Lindsay Lohan (Georgia Rule) to headlining the revival of a cult hit (Tron), to an independent singing feature (Country Strong) to playing one of the most iconic literary characters of a generation, Dean Moriarty in the film adaptation of Kerouac’s On the Road.

I had a big brother crush on Dean the first time I read On the Road. The second time I read On the Road I thought he just needed me to fix him. We were in love. The third time I thought we’d find each other but only much later in life. The fourth time I called him a loser. The fifth time, just two years ago, I loved him all over again but knew I’d have to leave him in the end. And these are only my projections. There are millions of others who see Dean an entirely different way. Needless to say, someone has a lot of confidence in Hedlund’s acting abilities.

Um, yeah he’s hot, but I don’t know if I’d go that far just yet. Or you could say that Dean, being Dean, isn’t all that complicated to portray anyway…? My friend LB doesn’t think Hedlund is the Dean she pictured. I worry he can’t act it.

But we don’t have to stress about that for a while yet. On the Road has just started shooting. And at Comic-Con Garrett’s focus on was on Tron. Back to the story – he strolled in like he’d just gotten up a few minutes before, smelling faintly of cigarettes and deodorant, and started at the top of the line. We were in the middle, and as he made his way down, I told Audra my producer that I didn’t think I could do it, that she’d have to talk to him because I didn’t want to. Dylan was working the camera and Dylan being Dylan started kissing his teeth and doing that dude dick measuring thing, eventually concluding that he wasn’t all that, which is what he concluded about everyone on our trip who wasn’t Stan Lee or, well, himself.

Anyway, Garrett finally arrived at our spot and I asked him whatever it was that I asked him and he replied with his low voice, rubbing the side of his face as he thought about his answer while making really great eye contact, looking down on my short ass, which is always a turn-on for me when a guy has to title his head steeply, and enough, wayyyy enough, so at the end of the interview, we shook hands and he was smiling and Audra says he was about to add one more comment in my direction, but I had already turned around and shut it down, and he had no choice but to move across the aisle to the next outlet in the queue. It’s better that way.

Later on I saw him smoking at a party deep in conversation with what looked to be an older woman, producer type, and she was much shorter so he would bend his knees and nod into her eyes when he wanted her to know he was listening closely to her point, and then he opened the door for someone carrying several boxes, and offered to help with the boxes and then you almost hope he starts kicking rabbits or something because it’s too much like this, much too much.”

Source

”Make no mistake: This is the movie of the year for the Comic-Con world, and just as last year Avatar made an overnight star of Sam Worthington, so it is this year with Garrett Hedlund – or who we will soon come to celebrate as Sam Flynn.

There was certainly the sense that this movie star was being born Friday afternoon in San Diego. Around 2 p.m., in the middle of the bustling Comic-Con foot traffic, Hedlund made a surprise appearance on the floor of the convention, to get his first look at the action figures made in his likeness. The young movie star, the talk of the town as the TRON buzz has spread like a virus, checked out his own line of toys, as a crowd started to gather, snapping photos and bringing the flow of passersby to a standstill.

I was the first one allowed to jump into the TRON booth – cameras still clicking away – to ask Hedlund a few questions about the big-screen reboot, and what it was like to work side by side with the great Jeff Bridges (be sure to check out our complete Bridges interview). And it was instantly clear that Hedlund, suave as he is, was a little taken aback by the crowds, the flashes and the cheers that lifted up from the crowd. This is the year of TRON, and Hedlund is in the eye of the storm, struggling to process all the jubilation surrounding his biggest movie to date. A couple highlights from our conversation:

I saw that they whisked you away pretty quickly from the first panel yesterday, is this your first time in the middle of the floor, where you can see the excitement that’s bubbling around here?

Yeah, man, this is powerful, but it’s great (he paused to look around the mobbed TRON booth). I came to Comic-Con once before for another film, but this is a whole other vehicle, a whole other ride and TRON: Legacy wouldn’t exist without all the support of people at previous Comic-Cons.

And also Jeff Bridges – I can’t tell you how many people have been buzzing about him. What was it like to get to work with him, side by side, in returning to the universe that he helped to make so famous?

I’ve had a lot of surreal moments in my life. Some have been eerie in the way of psychic things, I’ve always had weird feelings about things. And I always had the sense that I’d work with Jeff Bridges and to get to work with him in a father-son sort of duo is beyond anything I ever hoped for. Back when I did Friday Night Lights, the director Peter Berg had said, ‘You remind me of someone,’ and this was the very first day, ‘I can’t get it, it’s right on the tip of my tongue.’ And then on the last day he said: ‘I got it: Jeff Bridges.’ And that’s why when I got the part, actually working with Jeff, I really flipped out.

As for being on the set with him, I don’t know any other word but ‘Blessing.’ I’m trying to think of other words but that was it, working with him – he made me a much stronger actor – a much happier person, much happier actor, and to see him and how he composes himself on the set, it sets an example and a bar for anyone who is questioning. He makes you want to aspire to his level. He lives a happy life out of L.A., he’s not in the press, he works incredibly hard in every role that he does, and that’s what I took away. If you’re going to work on a film, work harder than everyone else. Take more notes than anyone else.

Did you find it easy to build a chemistry with Jeff, in the father-son setting? Or was it hard with a movie like this, where there’s so much special effects and computer graphics?

We spent a lot of time on that back and forth. A couple weeks of rehearsals, and even before that all started, we would meet up, Jeff and I and (director) Joseph Kosinski and the producers, and we would sit around a roundtable, and improvise scenes and the writer were there and we tried to use some of that – infuse that improvisational feel into the script, even as we started to understand each other more as actors.

Now I know you did some re-shoots back in February or March…

Those were actually just like a month and a half ago.

Oh, I didn’t realize it was that recent. Was it hard to get back into those roles after such a long break?

No, not at all. It was actually exciting. They got with Pixar, and tapped into some of their insights, and then collaborated with Skywalker Ranch, too, to get some insight with the sound. And you could see it was all just very smart, with how these guys dealt with it and found inspiration.

Did they add a lot of meatier stuff between you and Jeff?

There were a bunch of little tweaks, but they definitely infused more of the father-son dynamic, which I think will add a lot. It was just another step though in a really incredible experience – this whole thing has been the ride of a lifetime. Blessing is the only word I can think of.

Steve again: As Garrett shook my hand and smiled one of those happiest-moments-in-my-life grins, I gave up trying to ask a couple more questions as I was drowned out by screaming women who were trying to get a quick snapshot of the new Mr. Flynn. Garrett was only too happy to oblige. I stepped back, gave him the stage, made a quick exit, and joined the crowd.

As the cameras clicked away, there was no mistaking the fact that Garrett Hedlund is a name we will be hearing a whole lot more about.”

Source

Great interview! I hope there will be some videos from the booth soon as well. And Steve is right! We’re going to hear a lot more about Garrett in the future!