Call Me By Your Name

[LoveNDino]

I saw the re-release of Maurice on the big screen in Santa Monica earlier this year. Important movie. I bought the DVD. A Room with a View is a favorite of mine.

 

At first I was worried that the movie Call Me by Your Name had washed out too much of the "stuff" of the book and that Hammer was too old for Oliver's part.

But later I decided not to worry for two reasons.

I was told by people that saw it at Sundance not to worry, the movie is a gem.

If the actors agreed to show frontal nudity, Sony Classics might not have picked it up and I wonder if it would have been paid an entirely different attention, how the media loves to go on about things that might be dirty or controversial. Instead, it's tame enough to garner huge kudos and much dialogue about bisexuality.

I agree, in fact, let's read some of the buzz this movie is getting...

 

Luca Guadagnino

Call Me by Your Name played so rapturously at the New York Film Festival this week that you would have thought it had world-premiered there. Are we all underestimating this instant classic just because a gay-themed film won Best Picture last year? That’s the only reason I can think of for some pundits to leave Guadagnino off their short lists. The film will be big.

 

Another article stated:

Luca Guadagnino‘s “Call Me By Your Name,” which was a sensation at both Sundance and Berlin, just confirmed its Oscar potential with a boffo screening on the opening night of the Toronto film festival. The film charts the stormy course of a 1983 summer romance between Elio (Timothee Chalamet), an Italian teenager, and Oliver (Armie Hammer), an American academic seven years his senior who has come to stay at his parents’ villa. Oscar nominee James Ivory adapted Andre Aciman‘s 2007 bestseller of the same name.

 

Buoyed by these rave notices, the film is sure to inspire passion from some Oscar voters when they are ranking Best Picture contenders. That core support is key to reaping a bid under the preferential ballot system. A small but significant number of first-place votes would be enough to make the cut during the complicated counting process.

 

While Chalamet could break into the Best Actor race for his breakthrough performance, that category tends to recognize more seasoned performers. And while there are rumblings that Hammer should go lead as well, that would be a mistake as it would mean that the two men split the vote. Better that he follow the example of the likes of Viola Davis (“Fences”) and Patricia Arquette (“Boyhood”) and stay in supporting. There he would be all but assured of a nomination and perhaps even the win. However, he might face competition from Michael Stuhlbarg who plays Elio’s father and has several scene-stealing moments, including a lengthy monologue, that make the movie.

 

Guadagino could parlay a Best Picture bid into one for Best Director. He helmed the 2009 Italian language “I Am Love,” which contended at both the Golden Globes and BAFTA, as well as 2015’s “A Bigger Splash,” which featured Ralph Fiennes in a supporting turn that generated some pre-Oscar buzz. The adapted screenplay race at the Academy Awards is relatively light this year, and would be a way to finally reward Ivory, a three-time Oscar also-ran for Best Director (“A Room With a View,” 1985; “Howard’s End,” 1992; “The Remains of the Day,” 1993). And cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, best-known for films in his native Thailand such as 2010’s “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives,” is also a possibility.

 

 

Of course, I am writing this while eating a peach...

Edited October 7, 2017 by LoveNDino

[gallahadesquire]

Peach? I thought it was the fig that ... never mind.

[TruHart1]

I agree, in fact, let's read some of the buzz this movie is getting...

...

Of course, I am writing this while eating a peach...

Peach? I thought it was the fig that ... never mind.

Having read the book, @gallahadesquire, believe me, it's a peach! I'll bet that peach was sweet and oh, so juicy, @LoveNDino! I am quite curious how that particular masturbatory scene for Elio was translated to the screen, though the eating of the semen-filled peach by Oliver seems obvious, if perhaps difficult to convey the sensuality of the act (of eating) inherent in the novel!

http://producegeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/yellow-peaches-03.jpg

 

TruHart1

[OCClient]

Chalamet was as good as the reviews said. I didn't think I'd like Hammer as Oliver, but he was good too. I really liked both performances a lot. There is an easter egg in there which was fun.

A book and a movie are truly different art forms so comparing Aciman's book with the movie might not be entirely fair. I'll say that I liked the movie ending a lot.

[TruHart1]

Chalamet was as good as the reviews said. I didn't think I'd like Hammer as Oliver, but he was good too. I really liked both performances a lot. There is an easter egg in there which was fun.

A book and a movie are truly different art forms so comparing Aciman's book with the movie might not be entirely fair. I'll say that I liked the movie ending a lot.

Even Mr. Aciman has stated he liked the ending in the film, almost better that what he wrote in the novel.

 

TruHart1

[TruHart1]

Published on Oct 7, 2017 (From the New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center)

"In between a pair of sold-out screenings that earned standing ovations, the team behind Call Me by Your Name—director Luca Guadagnino and stars Timothée Chalamet, Armie Hammer, and Michael Stuhlbarg—joined us for an NYFF Live discussion. In a conversation moderated by Nigel M. Smith, they talked about their idyllic summer in Italy, the adaptation process, how the casting came together, their favorite classic films, if we might ever see a sequel, and more."

 

TruHart1

[OCClient]

Published on Oct 7, 2017 (From the New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center)

"In between a pair of sold-out screenings that earned standing ovations, the team behind Call Me by Your Name—director Luca Guadagnino and stars Timothée Chalamet, Armie Hammer, and Michael Stuhlbarg—joined us for an NYFF Live discussion. In a conversation moderated by Nigel M. Smith, they talked about their idyllic summer in Italy, the adaptation process, how the casting came together, their favorite classic films, if we might ever see a sequel, and more."

 

TruHart1

There are several good interviews including this NYFF Live.

 

In one, Armie Hammer admits Luca Guadagnino had Hammer and Chalamet lay down in the grass outside his house and to make out. He watched their attempt and told the two that they lacked passion, and try again. They gave a much more passionate attempt and after a while looked up. Guadagnino had left. In another interview, I believe the one above, Guadagnino suggests a sequel is possible. That's an interesting idea.

[LoveNDino]

A Complicated Affair

Armie Hammer was poised to be a major matinee idol. But he wasn’t prepared for what happened to him on the set of Call Me by Your Name.

 

By Kyle Buchanan

 

Armie Hammer is six-foot-five, a general advantage in life but one that doesn’t serve him well on the dance floor. “When I dance,” he told me recently over lunch in West Hollywood, “I think, You’re really shit at this, and everyone around you knows it because you’re the tallest guy on the dance floor and you stick out like a sore thumb.”

 

You can imagine Hammer’s embarrassment, then, when he had to shoot a dance scene for his new movie, the 1980s-set gay romance Call Me by Your Name. It’s a pivotal moment in the film that comes not long after his character, grad student Oliver, has arrived in a small Italian village to assist the professor father of our protagonist, 17-year-old Elio (Timothée Chalamet). The secret crush on this interloper that Elio nurses becomes full blown the night he watches Oliver boogie down to “Love My Way,” by the Psychedelic Furs: Oliver’s ecstatic, unabashed, and utterly indifferent to the world around him. “And that’s so not me, in any situation,” said Hammer. “I was like, ‘This is hell. Can we switch this for more nude scenes, please?’ ”

 

It wasn’t easy, but Hammer finally shed his inhibitions. His moves are just the slightest bit dorky, yet his character’s confidence is irresistible. Just don’t expect Hammer to echo Oliver’s carefree attitude: Ever since a clip of the scene went viral in October, the actor has gone dark on social media. “Anytime I would open up my Twitter, it was just a ton of that,” Hammer said with a laugh, referring to the clip, “and I was like, ‘Nope, I can’t have my nose rubbed in this anymore. I’m out!’ ”

 

In person, the 31-year-old Hammer is almost implausibly self-effacing. When I told him that I liked his 2015 caper movie The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and how it was too bad it didn’t do better at the box office, Hammer seized the opportunity to quip at his own expense: “That might be the Armie Hammer effect.” It’s true that since Hammer had his breakthrough dual role as the Winklevoss twins in David Fincher’s The Social Network, his follow-up projects — he played the charming prince in Mirror Mirror and the title role in The Lone Ranger — haven’t quite panned out. The irony is that The Social Network was supposed to launch him toward bigger movies, but none of his would-be franchise-starters managed to outgross that film domestically, and they left Hammer increasingly dissatisfied. “All of a sudden, I realized I was being shoehorned into something that was different than what I expected or wanted out of this business,” he said. “When you’re sitting in an acting class when you’re young, they tell you about the ideal experience on a project, where you work on a movie that challenges you and draws something out of you. But you don’t get that on big movies.”

 

So Hammer retrenched, working mainly in independent films like Nocturnal Animals and Birth of a Nation. Then director Luca Guadagnino sent Hammer the script for Call Me by Your Name. The offer was to play Oliver, whom the other characters call “la muvi star,” a term that is meant both as praise and as a pejorative. In an attempt to dispel his crush, Elio initially dismisses Oliver as a shallow American hunk: He’s afraid to look closer, and isn’t it easier not to? Guadagnino, though, was determined to go deeper with Hammer than any of his directors had. “I think Armie’s a very complex person,” said the Italian director, who also made I Am Love and A Bigger Splash. “It’s not just that he’s beautiful-looking. It’s that, plus his inner turmoil, that is fascinating to me.”

 

“Inner turmoil” is not the primary thing people think of when presented with Armie Hammer, who spent his formative years living in the laid-back Cayman Islands and is the great-grandson of a famous oil tycoon. But the self-effacement I had been initially skeptical of is something that comes to Hammer naturally: He is used to being looked at but not really seen, which makes him nervous about revealing an unvarnished side. “There are a lot of things about Oliver that resonated with me, and primarily it was that projection of ease and casualness and comfort that you might not actually be feeling all the time,” said Hammer. “My whole life, I’m bluffing my way through it all. And Luca was just like, ‘Nope, that doesn’t work around here’ — which was terrifying.”

 

Hammer is married to TV host Elizabeth Chambers and has two young children, but when production on Call Me by Your Name began in the summer of last year, he left his family behind to move to the Lombardy town of Crema in order to immerse himself in the film’s world. He and Chalamet were two of the few English-speakers for miles and grew to depend on each other as a result, but his bond was even more intense with Guadagnino, who continually challenged Hammer to drop his defenses in a way he never had onscreen.

 

“I’ve never had such an emotional journey with a director,” said Hammer. “I’ve never even considered directors to be emotional people! I don’t even know if I’ve worked with a director who even cared if I was mad at them before. It was more like, ‘Shut up and stand on your mark and do your job.’ ”

 

As Call Me by Your Name goes on, Oliver is willing to reveal more parts of himself to Elio, who becomes his lover. But even before that moment, as with the dance scene, Guadagnino and Hammer searched for opportunities to dig deeper. The André Aciman book that vu[p]cj9uczpad008zu0yewrlmt68y[d]D5atC42[r]nymag.com']Call Me by Your Name is based on tells the story from the point of view of Elio, who is enchanted with Oliver’s seemingly effortless confidence. Hammer, though, thought much of his character’s personality was performative, a well-practiced routine of smoke and mirrors. Even Oliver’s insouciant habit of ducking out of every scene with a breezy “Later!” had emotional underpinnings: “It’s about getting spooked by this human you’re infatuated with,” explained Hammer.

 

Eventually, Hammer himself became spooked, having plunged into Guadagnino’s process so deeply. “The feeling of operating from that place of passion is really contagious and soul-satiating,” he said. “It’s the safest place I’ve ever been in my life — still to this day — when it comes to feeling complete empathy, complete understanding, and complete love, no matter what. But then … he knows if you’re lying. He knows if you’re not being honest, whether in real life or in the performance. And he will not back off.”

 

As the production neared its end, Hammer admits, he became peevish and started to withdraw. “For reasons that could be personal to Armie, I had the feeling that he was pulling away,” said Guadagnino. “The movie wasn’t finished, and I had to bring him back.” I asked Hammer what had made him behave like that. “Everybody was sort of lashing out because this thing was ending and nobody wanted it to,” he said. He hesitated, wary of what to reveal. “Honestly,” Hammer said, “I think I had fallen in love with Luca.”

 

“For me to make a movie, it’s really creating a family,” said Guadagnino. “Having a very profound familial bond with the people I’m doing the movies with, where you literally and constantly fall in love with all of them. Sometimes, this emotional flow can be very intense. Very! As it was with Armie. And then it can be very complicated.”

 

Hammer had flourished as an actor and as a person under Guadagnino’s guidance and he couldn’t bear to let the project go. Eventually, he would have to, and so would Guadagnino, who was slated to begin his next film, a remake of the horror film Suspiria. Hammer said he became jealous once he felt Guadagnino mentally move on to that film. “I was like, ‘You fucking philanderer! You duplicitous bastard!’ And that made me pull away, and then he did, and it turned into this whole thing.”

 

To continue, click here

[OCClient]

A Complicated Affair

Armie Hammer was poised to be a major matinee idol. But he wasn’t prepared for what happened to him on the set of Call Me by Your Name.

 

By Kyle Buchanan

 

Armie Hammer is six-foot-five, a general advantage in life but one that doesn’t serve him well on the dance floor. “When I dance,” he told me recently over lunch in West Hollywood, “I think, You’re really shit at this, and everyone around you knows it because you’re the tallest guy on the dance floor and you stick out like a sore thumb.”

 

You can imagine Hammer’s embarrassment, then, when he had to shoot a dance scene for his new movie, the 1980s-set gay romance Call Me by Your Name. It’s a pivotal moment in the film that comes not long after his character, grad student Oliver, has arrived in a small Italian village to assist the professor father of our protagonist, 17-year-old Elio (Timothée Chalamet). The secret crush on this interloper that Elio nurses becomes full blown the night he watches Oliver boogie down to “Love My Way,” by the Psychedelic Furs: Oliver’s ecstatic, unabashed, and utterly indifferent to the world around him. “And that’s so not me, in any situation,” said Hammer. “I was like, ‘This is hell. Can we switch this for more nude scenes, please?’ ”

 

It wasn’t easy, but Hammer finally shed his inhibitions. His moves are just the slightest bit dorky, yet his character’s confidence is irresistible. Just don’t expect Hammer to echo Oliver’s carefree attitude: Ever since a clip of the scene went viral in October, the actor has gone dark on social media. “Anytime I would open up my Twitter, it was just a ton of that,” Hammer said with a laugh, referring to the clip, “and I was like, ‘Nope, I can’t have my nose rubbed in this anymore. I’m out!’ ”

 

In person, the 31-year-old Hammer is almost implausibly self-effacing. When I told him that I liked his 2015 caper movie The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and how it was too bad it didn’t do better at the box office, Hammer seized the opportunity to quip at his own expense: “That might be the Armie Hammer effect.” It’s true that since Hammer had his breakthrough dual role as the Winklevoss twins in David Fincher’s The Social Network, his follow-up projects — he played the charming prince in Mirror Mirror and the title role in The Lone Ranger — haven’t quite panned out. The irony is that The Social Network was supposed to launch him toward bigger movies, but none of his would-be franchise-starters managed to outgross that film domestically, and they left Hammer increasingly dissatisfied. “All of a sudden, I realized I was being shoehorned into something that was different than what I expected or wanted out of this business,” he said. “When you’re sitting in an acting class when you’re young, they tell you about the ideal experience on a project, where you work on a movie that challenges you and draws something out of you. But you don’t get that on big movies.”

 

So Hammer retrenched, working mainly in independent films like Nocturnal Animals and Birth of a Nation. Then director Luca Guadagnino sent Hammer the script for Call Me by Your Name. The offer was to play Oliver, whom the other characters call “la muvi star,” a term that is meant both as praise and as a pejorative. In an attempt to dispel his crush, Elio initially dismisses Oliver as a shallow American hunk: He’s afraid to look closer, and isn’t it easier not to? Guadagnino, though, was determined to go deeper with Hammer than any of his directors had. “I think Armie’s a very complex person,” said the Italian director, who also made I Am Love and A Bigger Splash. “It’s not just that he’s beautiful-looking. It’s that, plus his inner turmoil, that is fascinating to me.”

 

...

As Call Me by Your Name goes on, Oliver is willing to reveal more parts of himself to Elio, who becomes his lover. But even before that moment, as with the dance scene, Guadagnino and Hammer searched for opportunities to dig deeper. The André Aciman book that vu[p]cj9uczpad008zu0yewrlmt68y[d]D5atC42[r]nymag.com']Call Me by Your Name is based on tells the story from the point of view of Elio, who is enchanted with Oliver’s seemingly effortless confidence. Hammer, though, thought much of his character’s personality was performative, a well-practiced routine of smoke and mirrors. Even Oliver’s insouciant habit of ducking out of every scene with a breezy “Later!” had emotional underpinnings: “It’s about getting spooked by this human you’re infatuated with,” explained Hammer.

 

...

 

To continue, click here

I saw this yesterday. Such an interesting article!

Are you going to see CMBYN next week LoveNDino? I am going to make a day of it and head to LA! Maybe I'll see it twice. It is showing all day, starting in the morning. I saw CMBYN at the San Diego festival. Since then I listened to the audiobook twice. I honestly didn't think I would like Armie Hammer in the movie and I doubted I would like him reading the audiobook, but I was mistaken. He was outstanding in both. I was just wrong. It happens! If Grammys are give for audiobook CDs he should get one.

[LoveNDino]

@OCClient I am planning on seeing it when it opens in LA. I don't work on the 24th! Apart from checking out any sale on a new dishwasher, I am free. What about you?

 

In the meantime, below is another article on that tall drink of water, Armie Hammer...

 

The words tumble out of Armie Hammer’s mouth so fast that sometimes they hit their mark before you realize what he’s even said. That attribute made Hammer perfect to play Oliver, the grad student who beguiles young Elio (Timothée Chalamet) in Luca Guadagnino’s Italian romance Call Me by Your Name, since his character often ducks out of every scene with a tossed-off “Later,” and leaves Elio behind to parse everything said and unsaid between them. It also means that Hammer simply packs more words into every minute than anyone I’ve ever interviewed, and he told me plenty of great stories I just didn’t have room for in this week’s profile. Here, then, are 15 more of them.

 

1. He made a crazy election bet with Luca Guadagnino.

Yes, we’re all familiar with the time that Armie Hammer expertly ethered James Woods on Twitter, but for my money, Hammer’s most cutting clapback came last November. Shortly after Donald Trump’s election victory, a frustrated Hammer tweeted, “Our new president elect is the man the KKK endorsed. I’m going to bed.” The next morning, a random twitter user by the name of “bobokoko2” replied, “He didn’t seek their endorsement, nor did he embrace it. Quit changing the narrative to fit your political view.” Mere minutes later, Hammer wrote back, “What part of the narrative did I change? They did endorse him. Adjust your hood so you can see better.”

 

Adjust. Your hood. So you can see better.

 

With that terse tweet in mind, I had to ask Hammer what he was going through on Election Night. “I was officially depressed,” he said. “It was as depressing as anything I’d ever seen, and I’ve been more depressed since.” Making matters worse was that he had made a “way too big” bet with hisCall Me by Your Name director about the election’s outcome, and he found himself on the losing end: “That was rough. My whole reasoning for taking the bet with Luca was, ‘We’re not at that place as a country. I know we’ve got our problems, but it’s not possible that we’re that bad.’ And boy, have I been proven wrong!”

 

So what were the terms of the bet that Guadagnino and Hammer had made? If Hillary Clinton won, as Hammer had been certain she would, then Guadagnino would have to fly Hammer to the city of his choosing, put him up at a beautiful hotel for a few days, and join him for dinner in that city’s best restaurant. When Trump won, as the more fatalistic Guadagnino had predicted, Hammer found himself unable to finance that same prize for his director. “I was like, ‘Let me be honest with you, I cannot afford to do this bet right now. I just can’t! I’ve only done small movies for the last few years. It would literally bankrupt me, and I need to buy diapers tomorrow.’” Hammer has since bartered Guadagnino down to a Hermès sommelier set, which still costs a pretty penny: “I have now learned why they say, ‘Don’t make bets with Sicilians.’”

 

2. There’s one topic Hammer has never broached with his director.

Hammer and Guadagnino told me about their intense bond while filming Call Me by Your Name, which Hammer described as “falling in love.” What was it about Guadagnino that he so responded to? “In all honesty, I’ve never met a more astute student of human emotion,” said Hammer. “The complexity and duality within every human, he just gets it. He’s just a fucking genius, I don’t know.”

 

I’ve had conversations before with Guadagnino where he discusses actors, and it’s uncanny how well he can zero in on the locus of a star’s appeal, laying bare what makes that actor tick. It’s more than just a party trick: Guadagnino is simply that good at reading people. I wondered, then, if he had ever analyzed Hammer to his face. “I think he knows that if he would describe me to me, it would crush me,” Hammer said with a laugh. “He’s never even tried, and I’m so appreciative.”

 

3. Hammer didn’t meet Timothée Chalamet until they were both cast.

Though Call Me by Your Name lives or dies based on the connection Hammer has with his co-star, incredibly, he never did a chemistry read with Chalamet. In fact, the two actors only met once they were both in Italy to begin work on the film. “That might just be part of Luca’s genius,” said Hammer. “He said he just picked people who he loved, and knew that would be enough. As a control freak myself, that would scare the shit out of me.”

 

Fortunately, Hammer and Chalamet got along like gangbusters. “Timmy is, without a doubt, the most emotionally accessible human being I have ever come across in my life,” said Hammer. “You say something to him and you watch the entire thought process play out on his face. He is a completely open book, which is why you can end the movie on a seven-minute shot of just his face. I couldn’t do that!” Though Chalamet is just 21, Hammer said he more than held his own in their scenes. “I was as impressed with Timmy as a scene partner as I was with anyone I’ve ever done a scene with,” he said. “I know he’s going to be able to maintain that and foster that, and I can’t wait to see what he does as a performer.”

 

4. Hammer needed a creative muse for that dance scene.

As he made clear in our profile, Hammer wasn’t keen on filming Call Me by Your Name’s glorious dance scene. “Like any actor or artist, I definitely have my moments of feeling self-conscious,” said Hammer, who self-describes as “so gangly.” The fact that the scene was filmed without music — the Psychedelic Furs song “Love My Way” was added later, in postproduction — only exacerbated his embarrassment.

 

If Chalamet hadn’t been nearby, Hammer isn’t sure he could have shed his inhibitions. “He had to basically console me to help me get through the whole night,” said Hammer. “He’s so fucking free and open! When it was my coverage and he wasn’t even on shot, he would just be dancing over someone else, enjoying himself, having a good time. Watching him be so free every time, I was like, ‘Okay, that’s what this needs to be for me. This moment has to be a demonstration of Oliver really in his body, not worrying about anything and just letting himself go.’”

 

5. He’s game for a Call Me by Your Name sequel.

Since Hammer speaks so passionately about his experience shooting Call Me by Your Name, I asked him how he would feel if Guadagnino reunited the actors for a follow-up film, as the director has expressed interest in doing. “Anything he wants to do, I’m in,” said Hammer. “If it’s a sequel to this, that’s hilarious. I don’t know how you’d do it.” Hammer tossed out a few ideas for what could happen in the second film, mulling over whether they could expand the epilogue from André Aciman’s book that’s not used in the movie. Then he shook his head and pointed at a fruit plate on the table: “Whatever it’s about — it could even be a movie about this plate covered in limes — as long as it’s Luca, I would still love to do it.”

 

6. His great-grandfather may have been a Russian spy.

Hammer plays a Jewish character in Call Me by Your Name who wears his Star of David proudly. In real life, his father’s side of the family hails from Russian Jews, but to borrow a phrase from the film, they were “Jews of discretion” who didn’t advertise their affiliation. “It was always a big deal in my family that we were Russian, more so than anything else,” said Hammer, who has his last name inked in Russian on his wrist. “My great grandfather Armand was Jewish, but he didn’t even get his bar mitzvah. He was gonna be bar mitzvahed, and then he died the month before. That’s case in point of how it all kinda went.”

 

The great-grandfather Hammer is talking about, a globe-trotting oil tycoon who ran Occidental Petroleum Corporation until his death in 1990, was labeled by some biographers as a spy for Russia. I asked Hammer what he’d heard about the matter. “He was as much a Russian spy as he was an American spy,” he said. “He was the kind of person who went all over the world and had connections with all kinds of people, so it would be hard to imagine that when he got back to either America or Russia that someone didn’t come up to him and say, ‘Hey, can I ask you questions about what you saw?’ And I bet he was like, ‘Sure, if I can get this from you.’ He was a deal-maker.”

 

Continue here for #'s 7- 15

Edited November 16, 2017 by LoveNDino

[MscleLovr]

It's a wonderful movie. It went on general release in the UK about 3 weeks ago. It had pretty universal rave-reviews in the national media and so far it has done quite well at the box office.

[SuperJunior]

It doesn’t open in Atlanta until 12/22.

[LoveNDino]

It doesn’t open in Atlanta until 12/22.

Sorry dude.

[OCClient]

@OCClient I am planning on seeing it when it opens in LA. I don't work on the 24th! Apart from checking out any sale on a new dishwasher, I am free. What about you?

 

In the meantime, below is another article on that tall drink of water, Armie Hammer...

 

The words tumble out of Armie Hammer’s mouth so fast that sometimes they hit their mark before you realize what he’s even said. That attribute made Hammer perfect to play Oliver, the grad student who beguiles young Elio (Timothée Chalamet) in Luca Guadagnino’s Italian romance Call Me by Your Name, since his character often ducks out of every scene with a tossed-off “Later,” and leaves Elio behind to parse everything said and unsaid between them. It also means that Hammer simply packs more words into every minute than anyone I’ve ever interviewed, and he told me plenty of great stories I just didn’t have room for in this week’s profile. Here, then, are 15 more of them.

 

1. He made a crazy election bet with Luca Guadagnino.

Yes, we’re all familiar with the time that Armie Hammer expertly ethered James Woods on Twitter, but for my money, Hammer’s most cutting clapback came last November. Shortly after Donald Trump’s election victory, a frustrated Hammer tweeted, “Our new president elect is the man the KKK endorsed. I’m going to bed.” The next morning, a random twitter user by the name of “bobokoko2” replied, “He didn’t seek their endorsement, nor did he embrace it. Quit changing the narrative to fit your political view.” Mere minutes later, Hammer wrote back, “What part of the narrative did I change? They did endorse him. Adjust your hood so you can see better.”

 

Adjust. Your hood. So you can see better.

 

With that terse tweet in mind, I had to ask Hammer what he was going through on Election Night. “I was officially depressed,” he said. “It was as depressing as anything I’d ever seen, and I’ve been more depressed since.” Making matters worse was that he had made a “way too big” bet with hisCall Me by Your Name director about the election’s outcome, and he found himself on the losing end: “That was rough. My whole reasoning for taking the bet with Luca was, ‘We’re not at that place as a country. I know we’ve got our problems, but it’s not possible that we’re that bad.’ And boy, have I been proven wrong!”

 

So what were the terms of the bet that Guadagnino and Hammer had made? If Hillary Clinton won, as Hammer had been certain she would, then Guadagnino would have to fly Hammer to the city of his choosing, put him up at a beautiful hotel for a few days, and join him for dinner in that city’s best restaurant. When Trump won, as the more fatalistic Guadagnino had predicted, Hammer found himself unable to finance that same prize for his director. “I was like, ‘Let me be honest with you, I cannot afford to do this bet right now. I just can’t! I’ve only done small movies for the last few years. It would literally bankrupt me, and I need to buy diapers tomorrow.’” Hammer has since bartered Guadagnino down to a Hermès sommelier set, which still costs a pretty penny: “I have now learned why they say, ‘Don’t make bets with Sicilians.’”

 

2. There’s one topic Hammer has never broached with his director.

Hammer and Guadagnino told me about their intense bond while filming Call Me by Your Name, which Hammer described as “falling in love.” What was it about Guadagnino that he so responded to? “In all honesty, I’ve never met a more astute student of human emotion,” said Hammer. “The complexity and duality within every human, he just gets it. He’s just a fucking genius, I don’t know.”

 

I’ve had conversations before with Guadagnino where he discusses actors, and it’s uncanny how well he can zero in on the locus of a star’s appeal, laying bare what makes that actor tick. It’s more than just a party trick: Guadagnino is simply that good at reading people. I wondered, then, if he had ever analyzed Hammer to his face. “I think he knows that if he would describe me to me, it would crush me,” Hammer said with a laugh. “He’s never even tried, and I’m so appreciative.”

 

3. Hammer didn’t meet Timothée Chalamet until they were both cast.

Though Call Me by Your Name lives or dies based on the connection Hammer has with his co-star, incredibly, he never did a chemistry read with Chalamet. In fact, the two actors only met once they were both in Italy to begin work on the film. “That might just be part of Luca’s genius,” said Hammer. “He said he just picked people who he loved, and knew that would be enough. As a control freak myself, that would scare the shit out of me.”

 

Fortunately, Hammer and Chalamet got along like gangbusters. “Timmy is, without a doubt, the most emotionally accessible human being I have ever come across in my life,” said Hammer. “You say something to him and you watch the entire thought process play out on his face. He is a completely open book, which is why you can end the movie on a seven-minute shot of just his face. I couldn’t do that!” Though Chalamet is just 21, Hammer said he more than held his own in their scenes. “I was as impressed with Timmy as a scene partner as I was with anyone I’ve ever done a scene with,” he said. “I know he’s going to be able to maintain that and foster that, and I can’t wait to see what he does as a performer.”

 

4. Hammer needed a creative muse for that dance scene.

As he made clear in our profile, Hammer wasn’t keen on filming Call Me by Your Name’s glorious dance scene. “Like any actor or artist, I definitely have my moments of feeling self-conscious,” said Hammer, who self-describes as “so gangly.” The fact that the scene was filmed without music — the Psychedelic Furs song “Love My Way” was added later, in postproduction — only exacerbated his embarrassment.

 

If Chalamet hadn’t been nearby, Hammer isn’t sure he could have shed his inhibitions. “He had to basically console me to help me get through the whole night,” said Hammer. “He’s so fucking free and open! When it was my coverage and he wasn’t even on shot, he would just be dancing over someone else, enjoying himself, having a good time. Watching him be so free every time, I was like, ‘Okay, that’s what this needs to be for me. This moment has to be a demonstration of Oliver really in his body, not worrying about anything and just letting himself go.’”

 

5. He’s game for a Call Me by Your Name sequel.

Since Hammer speaks so passionately about his experience shooting Call Me by Your Name, I asked him how he would feel if Guadagnino reunited the actors for a follow-up film, as the director has expressed interest in doing. “Anything he wants to do, I’m in,” said Hammer. “If it’s a sequel to this, that’s hilarious. I don’t know how you’d do it.” Hammer tossed out a few ideas for what could happen in the second film, mulling over whether they could expand the epilogue from André Aciman’s book that’s not used in the movie. Then he shook his head and pointed at a fruit plate on the table: “Whatever it’s about — it could even be a movie about this plate covered in limes — as long as it’s Luca, I would still love to do it.”

 

 

Continue here for #'s 7- 15

 

I am free @LoveNDino. I do not work Friday

There are still plenty of tickets available. Are you a Landmark fan? The Arclight? It's also at Sunset Sundance cinema.

 

Thanks for sharing the article. So interesting. I assumed Hammer was financially OK knowing is line. I hope he was exaggerating about thin finances, but in case he's not I'm glad I've been trumpeting how wonderful he is in the audiobook. Such a handsome and clever man, isn't he?

 

In one interview I saw on YouTube the question came up whether Guadagnino had kissed Hammer and Hammer responded in sort of a dramatic tone "not yet!" One can tell how much he would like getting back on set for a sequel.

[LoveNDino]

I am free @LoveNDino. I do not work Friday

There are still plenty of tickets available. Are you a Landmark fan? The Arclight? It's also at Sunset Sundance cinema.

 

Thanks for sharing the article. So interesting. I assumed Hammer was financially OK knowing is line. I hope he was exaggerating about thin finances, but in case he's not I'm glad I've been trumpeting how wonderful he is in the audiobook. Such a handsome and clever man, isn't he?

 

In one interview I saw on YouTube the question came up whether Guadagnino had kissed Hammer and Hammer responded in sort of a dramatic tone "not yet!" One can tell how much he would like getting back on set for a sequel.

Hey, we can make a day of it - lunch and matinee? Let me know when and where!

[OCClient]

Hey, we can make a day of it - lunch and matinee? Let me know when and where!

OK! Let me do some searching for lunch spots. I sort of know my way around LA.

[OCClient]

Just ran across this video today. I'm really struck by A.H. and T.C., how informed and honest their answers are. And really, despite some of the interviewer's clownish behavior, the questions were awesome, and the actors seemed glad about that.

Edited November 18, 2017 by OCClient

[OCClient]

OK, one more new one I just found. Yeah I'm obsessed with the book, the audiobook and the movie.

I love this one because they start out by saying Armie's character falls in love with Elio, which is totally overlooked by many reviewers. Plus the interview never mentions anything about sexuality. That is pretty smart of Hoda, bless her heart. Good on the Today Show.

[OCClient]

These two have chemistry. Can't wait to hear them announce the sequel.

 

 

 

Edited November 19, 2017 by OCClient

[LoveNDino]

To whet our appetites even more...

[OCClient]

To whet our appetites even more...

Love this scene. Was cool that Guadagnino had T.C. learn to play those piano parts.

[Deadlift1]

Check out "beach rats" and "god's own country" which both received rave reviews. GOC is suppose to be the uk version of brokeback mountain.

[LoveNDino]

Check out "beach rats" and "god's own country" which both received rave reviews. GOC is suppose to be the uk version of brokeback mountain.

I would like to see God’s Own Country but not Beach Rats and I don’t know why. I think Beach Rats is already on PPV...

[OCClient]

I would see Beach Rats again. CMBYN is poignant and lovely, while Beach Rats is dark and has a

 

 

+++++++++++++++SPOILER++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

needless gay bashing which apparently the director thought would add some kind of necessary texture to her story. It probably appealed to the indie film festival hipsters peering into what the writer/director wanted to portray with her impression of the seamy underbelly of gay life.

 

+++++++++++++++++END OF SPOILER+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

The lead actor is very good though, worth the price of admission IMO.

 

God's Own Country I would also see again. The comparisons to BrBckMt might be more fitting for UK fans and where they are at with acceptance of love between men on film.

 

BrBckMt was groundbreaking for Americans around a decade ago. But time marches on. For me, the comparison is not helpful, except there were a lot of sheep in both movies. Honestly, Brokeback Mountain is an astounding movie for me, for a lot of reasons. I just don't see how GOC can be compared to it, and I don't think it is fair to do that to GOC, which stands on its own merits.

Edited November 19, 2017 by OCClient

[N13]

Just returned from watching a screening in NYC. Although I think it is an excellent movie I am not sure that it is the "Be All and End All." Maybe all of the previews, press junkets and youtube overkill took away a lot of the surprise and nuances. Great performances....check! Great cinematography.....check! Great script.....check! Great direction......check! I did not, however love the music. I found it a bit strident and too loud. I think the film will become a classic of sorts and play very well on the Academy Awards and the other award circuits. But.............