Brief Joan media update
Nov. 21st, 2003 02:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ealgyldenIt's Friday, so it must be "Post More Articles about Joan Day" (if I'm going to be such a slacker about posting my own thoughts, the least I can do is post other people's). The Philadelphia Inquirer had a brief review (thanks to Little Sister for pointing it out to me) with a small few mistakes ("Michael Girardi" and a slight misquote from Homeless!God), but overall it's nice. Sort of a mini version of the really good Washington Post article that I posted last week. And there will apparently be a Joan segment on ET tonight (I think it's on tonight's show, anyway). Here's the blurb, with a clip of Amber, Mary S. and Barbara Hall.
X-Posé (a British genre media mag) has an article on Mary Steenbergen's roles in Joan and Elf in the November issue. Unfortunately it isn't on their site, so I've typed up the text. The pictures are all the same "Girardis on the lawn" or "Joan is cute and stripy" promos from the beginning of the season.
Maternal Instinct
Somehow, Mary Steenbergen has cornered the market in caring mothers who're forced to accept the unbelievable. She tells Ian Spelling about maternal duties in Joan of Arcadia and Elf...
It's a curious thing, but an actor can become an old hand in a genre without even noticing. "Somebody said to me," remarks Mary Steenbergen, "'Do you realize you've done several things where someone starts from a lack of belief in something into really believing?' I said, 'Really?' They said, 'Yes, you made One Magic Christmas, which was a Christmas movie about a crisis of belief.' I said, 'Yeah, that's true.' Then the person said, 'And then there's Back to the Future III, where you end up realizing that Doc is telling the truth about coming from another time.' And then there's Time After Time. It's sort of jaw-dropping to me, because I'd never thought about it."
Well, now it's time to add a couple of more such credits: Joan of Arcadia and Elf. A surprise ratings success, Joan of Arcadia follows the Girardi family- police chief dad, Will (Joe Mantegna), mom Helen (Steenbergen), daughter Joan (Amber Tamblyn), wheelchair-bound former jock son Kevin (Jason Ritter), and younger science geek son Luke (Michael Welch)- as they deal with an unusual situation. Joan hears and heeds the voice of God, who makes His presence felt by turning up in everyday people who interact with Joan. Joan doesn't quite understand what's going on. Is it a blessing? A curse? Who is she supposed to listen to? Or is she just plain nuts?
"Joan of Arcadia is just an amazingly intelligent and imaginative premise created by the same woman who wrote a lot of Northern Exposure and Judging Amy," Steenbergen says, referring to executive producer Barbara Hall. "I thought the pilot was so deep and intelligent that is audiences saw it they'd respond. The problem is that this is a very hard show to talk about without it sounding like less than what it is. So what we were hoping was that the critics would help us, and that's what happened. And they had the same problem I had. Some of them wrote, 'I didn't think I would like this, but...' So when it came out that it was the number one critical success of the new season that helped us an awful lot."
Steenbergen smiles when asked what's special about Joan of Arcadia, why people are connecting to it. It's popular with teens and adults, religious people and non-believers. It's popular in big cities and small ones, too. "You have to look at the genesis of something," the actress notes. "Barbara decided after 9-11 that this was the only thing she really wanted to write about- not about religion, but about the idea of God because that, after all, was what the event was all about. She spent two years researching every religion in the world, every small and vast idea people had in terms of religion. And at the end of that she wanted to write a story about a modern-day Joan of Arc and very much have this fit into the idea of family. She also wanted to make it funny, which is one of the things I think the critics love about it and which surprised people. That appealed to me, too. One of the things that scared me about doing an hour drama was just doing something that was always serious. I would find that hard, being a laugh junkie."
Joan of Arcadia started off nicely and continues to grow, and much the same can be said about Helen. She is the show's matriarch, but no one knows what role she'll play in the long run. Helen loves and supports her daughter, but if God really talks to Joan, it remains to be seen how Helen will react. "I don't know yet what my role will really be, in terms of just Joan," Steenbergen says. "I think what I represent is someone who's really struggling to be the heart and center of a family, but who is herself in a crisis of not just religious or spiritual faith, but just in terms of being able to cope with life. At the same time, she has no choice whatsoever but to be the rock because everybody depends on her. So it's an interesting push-pull and it makes for an interesting character."
Steenbergen plays a different kind of mother in her other current project, the holiday comedy Elf. Will Ferrell is Buddy, a human raised as an elf in the North Pole, who arrives in New York City to find his family. Steenbergen co-stars as Emily, wife to Buddy's dad (James Caan), a children's book publisher on Santa's (Ed Asner) naughty list. "When I heard there was a film called Elf with Will Ferrell in the title role the truth was I told my manager, 'Of course, I will be doing that,'" Steenbergen says. "I didn't care how big or small the part is or how much they'd pay. I said, 'I will be doing that.' He said, 'Why do you feel so strongly?' I said, 'Because my kids would kill me if I didn't do that.' So the decision was made pretty quickly."
The actress grew up watching such classic holiday programs as Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman, and she hopes Elf will become a tradition for a new generation. She reports that everyone working on Elf approached the film with his or her own love of whatever the holidays were, or if the holidays weren't everything somebody had wanted them to be, then what they dreamt they'd be. "Each of us infused this film with that kind of strangely personal love and feeling," Steenbergen says. "So there's a tenderness in the movie that came not just from the actors, not just from the director, not just from the producers, but every single department put what they loved about Christmas into this movie. The first time I walked on the set of our apartment after Buddy had decorated it, honestly they could've just shot me walking around and that would've been it. I was like a three-year-old. 'Oh, my God!' It was like a fairyland. They'd use the cleverest things. They had to use what was in the apartment. So there were CDs hanging around, because they're reflective. And there were knives and forks hanging from the ceiling. It was completely inventive. If you looked at the costumes closely they were beautiful, this little hand-done embroidery and the way they were lined. Every department put so much of their own passion about the subject into their work."
- Ian Spelling, X-posé #81 (Nov. '03), 22-27.
Sidebar #1- Playing Mom
Mary Steenbergen likes to play Mom. She does it at home with her real family and on screen in Joan of Arcadia. Then, of course, the lines blur, as she sometimes acts as surrogate Mom to her Joan of Arcadia co-stars. "Jason Ritter graduated from high school with my two oldest daughters and then he and I did a play in New York," Steenbergen says. "Then Jason and I did another play in New York. And now he's playing my son. So we clearly have some sort of destiny together. Amber Tamblyn is just amazing She's got two incredible parents, so she doesn't need me to mother her. But it has been great to be there for her because she is facing an enormous amount of attention as a result of this. Michael Welch is hilarious. He came in one day and said, 'Mary!' I said, 'What?' He said, 'I got my first fan letter!' So we had to read his first fan letter together and it was so sweet. It's kind of amazing, going through this. But I came home the other night and my son made some hilarious little put-down of me, which seems to be his wont. I said, 'Charlie, I spend all day long with teenagers putting me down and I'm being paid for it. Now, I have to come home and hear you do it. This is too much.' So it's strange. I have a lot of teenagers in my life."
Sidebar #2- An Elfy Eating Strategy
They call it Method Acting. It's when an actor demands such realism that he or she will gain 80 punds for a role or eat a real insect or endure some inhuman situation so that a moment put before a camera feels as real as possible. Steenbergen, however is not a Method Actress, and thus one can only wonder about a sweet scene in Elf in which she chows down on a bowl of spaghetti and maple syrup lovingly and excitedly prepared for her by Buddy. "That took many takes," Steenbergen complains. "I think someone should challenge [director] Jon Favreau because I think he actually used the first take, so I really question why I had to do 10 takes. I was eating spaghetti with maple syrup on it at nine o'clock in the morning. That was not my idea. I was quite willing to fake it. It was Method directing, thank you. I think it was Jon being sadistic."
X-Posé (a British genre media mag) has an article on Mary Steenbergen's roles in Joan and Elf in the November issue. Unfortunately it isn't on their site, so I've typed up the text. The pictures are all the same "Girardis on the lawn" or "Joan is cute and stripy" promos from the beginning of the season.
Maternal Instinct
Somehow, Mary Steenbergen has cornered the market in caring mothers who're forced to accept the unbelievable. She tells Ian Spelling about maternal duties in Joan of Arcadia and Elf...
It's a curious thing, but an actor can become an old hand in a genre without even noticing. "Somebody said to me," remarks Mary Steenbergen, "'Do you realize you've done several things where someone starts from a lack of belief in something into really believing?' I said, 'Really?' They said, 'Yes, you made One Magic Christmas, which was a Christmas movie about a crisis of belief.' I said, 'Yeah, that's true.' Then the person said, 'And then there's Back to the Future III, where you end up realizing that Doc is telling the truth about coming from another time.' And then there's Time After Time. It's sort of jaw-dropping to me, because I'd never thought about it."
Well, now it's time to add a couple of more such credits: Joan of Arcadia and Elf. A surprise ratings success, Joan of Arcadia follows the Girardi family- police chief dad, Will (Joe Mantegna), mom Helen (Steenbergen), daughter Joan (Amber Tamblyn), wheelchair-bound former jock son Kevin (Jason Ritter), and younger science geek son Luke (Michael Welch)- as they deal with an unusual situation. Joan hears and heeds the voice of God, who makes His presence felt by turning up in everyday people who interact with Joan. Joan doesn't quite understand what's going on. Is it a blessing? A curse? Who is she supposed to listen to? Or is she just plain nuts?
"Joan of Arcadia is just an amazingly intelligent and imaginative premise created by the same woman who wrote a lot of Northern Exposure and Judging Amy," Steenbergen says, referring to executive producer Barbara Hall. "I thought the pilot was so deep and intelligent that is audiences saw it they'd respond. The problem is that this is a very hard show to talk about without it sounding like less than what it is. So what we were hoping was that the critics would help us, and that's what happened. And they had the same problem I had. Some of them wrote, 'I didn't think I would like this, but...' So when it came out that it was the number one critical success of the new season that helped us an awful lot."
Steenbergen smiles when asked what's special about Joan of Arcadia, why people are connecting to it. It's popular with teens and adults, religious people and non-believers. It's popular in big cities and small ones, too. "You have to look at the genesis of something," the actress notes. "Barbara decided after 9-11 that this was the only thing she really wanted to write about- not about religion, but about the idea of God because that, after all, was what the event was all about. She spent two years researching every religion in the world, every small and vast idea people had in terms of religion. And at the end of that she wanted to write a story about a modern-day Joan of Arc and very much have this fit into the idea of family. She also wanted to make it funny, which is one of the things I think the critics love about it and which surprised people. That appealed to me, too. One of the things that scared me about doing an hour drama was just doing something that was always serious. I would find that hard, being a laugh junkie."
Joan of Arcadia started off nicely and continues to grow, and much the same can be said about Helen. She is the show's matriarch, but no one knows what role she'll play in the long run. Helen loves and supports her daughter, but if God really talks to Joan, it remains to be seen how Helen will react. "I don't know yet what my role will really be, in terms of just Joan," Steenbergen says. "I think what I represent is someone who's really struggling to be the heart and center of a family, but who is herself in a crisis of not just religious or spiritual faith, but just in terms of being able to cope with life. At the same time, she has no choice whatsoever but to be the rock because everybody depends on her. So it's an interesting push-pull and it makes for an interesting character."
Steenbergen plays a different kind of mother in her other current project, the holiday comedy Elf. Will Ferrell is Buddy, a human raised as an elf in the North Pole, who arrives in New York City to find his family. Steenbergen co-stars as Emily, wife to Buddy's dad (James Caan), a children's book publisher on Santa's (Ed Asner) naughty list. "When I heard there was a film called Elf with Will Ferrell in the title role the truth was I told my manager, 'Of course, I will be doing that,'" Steenbergen says. "I didn't care how big or small the part is or how much they'd pay. I said, 'I will be doing that.' He said, 'Why do you feel so strongly?' I said, 'Because my kids would kill me if I didn't do that.' So the decision was made pretty quickly."
The actress grew up watching such classic holiday programs as Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman, and she hopes Elf will become a tradition for a new generation. She reports that everyone working on Elf approached the film with his or her own love of whatever the holidays were, or if the holidays weren't everything somebody had wanted them to be, then what they dreamt they'd be. "Each of us infused this film with that kind of strangely personal love and feeling," Steenbergen says. "So there's a tenderness in the movie that came not just from the actors, not just from the director, not just from the producers, but every single department put what they loved about Christmas into this movie. The first time I walked on the set of our apartment after Buddy had decorated it, honestly they could've just shot me walking around and that would've been it. I was like a three-year-old. 'Oh, my God!' It was like a fairyland. They'd use the cleverest things. They had to use what was in the apartment. So there were CDs hanging around, because they're reflective. And there were knives and forks hanging from the ceiling. It was completely inventive. If you looked at the costumes closely they were beautiful, this little hand-done embroidery and the way they were lined. Every department put so much of their own passion about the subject into their work."
- Ian Spelling, X-posé #81 (Nov. '03), 22-27.
Sidebar #1- Playing Mom
Mary Steenbergen likes to play Mom. She does it at home with her real family and on screen in Joan of Arcadia. Then, of course, the lines blur, as she sometimes acts as surrogate Mom to her Joan of Arcadia co-stars. "Jason Ritter graduated from high school with my two oldest daughters and then he and I did a play in New York," Steenbergen says. "Then Jason and I did another play in New York. And now he's playing my son. So we clearly have some sort of destiny together. Amber Tamblyn is just amazing She's got two incredible parents, so she doesn't need me to mother her. But it has been great to be there for her because she is facing an enormous amount of attention as a result of this. Michael Welch is hilarious. He came in one day and said, 'Mary!' I said, 'What?' He said, 'I got my first fan letter!' So we had to read his first fan letter together and it was so sweet. It's kind of amazing, going through this. But I came home the other night and my son made some hilarious little put-down of me, which seems to be his wont. I said, 'Charlie, I spend all day long with teenagers putting me down and I'm being paid for it. Now, I have to come home and hear you do it. This is too much.' So it's strange. I have a lot of teenagers in my life."
Sidebar #2- An Elfy Eating Strategy
They call it Method Acting. It's when an actor demands such realism that he or she will gain 80 punds for a role or eat a real insect or endure some inhuman situation so that a moment put before a camera feels as real as possible. Steenbergen, however is not a Method Actress, and thus one can only wonder about a sweet scene in Elf in which she chows down on a bowl of spaghetti and maple syrup lovingly and excitedly prepared for her by Buddy. "That took many takes," Steenbergen complains. "I think someone should challenge [director] Jon Favreau because I think he actually used the first take, so I really question why I had to do 10 takes. I was eating spaghetti with maple syrup on it at nine o'clock in the morning. That was not my idea. I was quite willing to fake it. It was Method directing, thank you. I think it was Jon being sadistic."
