More press material from the SXSW 2010 festival!

The people at Cinematical, who also recently posted a positive review on Barry Munday, caught up with the film’s star Chloë Sevigny the day after its SXSW world premiere to discuss the production of the film as well as that of Chloë’s second SXSW movie, Mr. Nice. The interview offers a lot of new insight into the respective productions from Chloë’s perspective, and she also talks about her career overall, who she’d like to work with in the future and how she chooses her roles.

Read the article in full at Cinematical.com; excerpts follow:

Cinematical: How did you find yourself involved with Barry Munday to begin with?
Chloe Sevigny: My agent was a supporter of the film from the beginning. She read the script and was very enthusiastic about it and sent it to me; I actually read for the part of Ginger first, and then it went to Judy [Greer]. We had a really great meeting, I really loved Chris, and we got along really well. He came back to me saying Judy’s going to play Ginger, but would you be interested in playing Jennifer? And I thought, why not? I think I’ve been playing a character you love to hate on Big Love, and on the big screen I’d like to try something along those lines but a bit different. In the movie, I think Jennifer’s character is funny because she’s kind of a seductress. It was kind of interesting to play that kind of bitchy role.

[...] Cinematical: Patrick Wilson’s performance was surprising in that he’s funnier than anyone might expect, and pulls off the feat of being the world’s biggest douche bag and being likable at the same time.
Chloe Sevigny: Obviously, he’s a dramatic actor. I had no idea how he was going to play the role until I showed up and saw him improvising, walking around pulling these faces. Oh my god, it was too funny. He’s more than funny. I was really impressed with him. I guess he’s honed that on the stage but I’ve never seen him on the stage doing comedy before, so I was really surprised and impressed. I said, you’d better get ready to make a lot of money, because a lot of people are going to be calling you to do big comedies.

Cinematical: You’ve got not one, but two films at SXSW. What was your experience like shooting Mr. Nice, and how much more crazy is your SXSW schedule with two films in the festival?
Chloe Sevigny: Having two films has happened to me a lot in the past over the years at different festivals; it just means more work. Mr. Nice is a biopic about a drug smuggler named Howard Marks. Rhys Ifans stars. It was very improvisational, the shooting, and the director is kind of a wild man; he didn’t want to rehearse or block any scenes. Sometimes he wouldn’t even let us see the room we were going to do the scene in until we walked in to shoot. It was very challenging, because I was also doing a British accent. I rehearsed on my own over and over again, but then Rhys of course improvised and I would have to try and respond in a British accent, with improvisation! It was very hard for me, I’d never done that before. But I really love Bernard, I think he’s a great filmmaker and it was really fun to shoot that way.

[...]Cinematical: Have you consciously avoided taking mainstream roles?
Chloe Sevigny: Not necessarily. People like to project that on me, but it’s not necessarily true. If it was right, with the right director and the right material. I usually choose my projects depending on the director and who else is involved, and I’ve worked for the most part with writer-directors throughout my career.

Cinematical: Which directors out there would you like to work with that you haven’t had a chance to?
Chloe Sevigny: Jane Campion, or the Coen brothers.