Five Minute Time Out: Mr. Magorium's Emporium
We chat with Dustin Hoffman, Natalie Portman and Jason Bateman!
by April Peveteaux
November 20, 2007
Kicking off the holiday movie season is a visually arresting tale of a magical toy store where a big book produces any toy you desire and sock monkeys lovingly hug you back. Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium makes you forget about lead paint and GHB, if only for an hour and a half. But there is trouble in the Emporium: its 243-year-old creator (Dustin Hoffman) decides it's time to exit, leaving the store in the young and unsteady hands of Molly Mahoney (Natalie Portman). The Emporium promptly goes into a deep depression, self-destructing and losing its magic.
Screenwriter and first-time director Zach Helm (Stranger Than Fiction) creates a world of elaborate living toys that only a weird kid with a large hat collection can relate to. Enter weird kid, Eric Applebee (Zach Mills), who makes friends with and inspires Mahoney. Accountant Henry Weston (Jason Bateman) receives his requisite dose of childlike wonder.
Last week, the cast of Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium sat down at the Regency Hotel in New York for a frank chat about misguided child actors, violent kids' movies and sugaring up before the cameras roll. — April Peveteaux
On Making a Movie For Kids
Dustin Hoffman: I've never been able to grow up. This character is an adult, but he's not a grown-up.
Natalie Portman: It was definitely appealing to me that I could make a movie that I could take my friend's kids to. This has so much in it that will interest parents too, and when they go with their kids they won't feel like they're being dragged to a kids' movie.
Jason Bateman: I don't get to be that silly that often. I got myself all hopped up on sugar and put the hat on and away we went.
Zach Mills: They had, like, really cool stuff. It was hard not to wander off every time they yelled 'cut'. Toys! They did tell me not to go on to the book balcony though. They know me. I like to read and I would be up there all day.
On Making It In Hollywood
Hoffman: [Acting teacher Barney Brown] took me aside and in so many words, he said, "You are a theater person. You are
"I've never been able to grow up." — Dustin Hoffman a theater animal and this is what you should do: Go to New York." I was in Los Angeles and he says, "Nothing is going to happen for at least ten years. Wait a lot of tables and learn the craft. You are a very strange type and you're going to have trouble getting work." And he was absolutely correct. When I got The Graduate it was eleven or twelve years later.
Portman: Almost all the other actresses working today, in my age range, started out as kids. If you look at Lindsay Lohan, Scarlett Johanssen, Keira Knightley, Kirsten Dunst, Christina Ricci, Claire Danes, Reese Witherspoon . . . all of us started really young. Most of us started between eight and ten. So it clearly gives people help with how to do it as adults.
Bateman: I would not like to be thrown out of the party. The door is a swinging door and if you get too close to it you'll get pushed out. I like staying in the back of the room with the cool kids, if they let me hang out with them. Usually when you take the smaller roles they're somewhat better roles. Any film I'm offered to be the lead of right now is a pretty stinky movie. The films that I'm offered where I may be third or fourth down on the call sheet, they're pretty good films. Number one, two and three on that call sheet are great actors and they attract a great director.
Mills: I want to act when I grow up. Or direct.
©2007 April Peveteaux and Nerve Media
About the Author
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April Peveteaux is a writer, editor and sometimes performer. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, son and daughter. |
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