http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/s_379218.html
By Ed Blank
TRIBUNE-REVIEW FILM CRITIC
Sunday, October 2, 2005
No matter where Elijah Wood goes, no matter what he does, about a billion people will identify him as Frodo in Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.
It was that kind of success.
More recently, he was in "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and "Sin City" before making a couple of independent films that have gone into release concurrently on the art-house circuit, meaning one or two prints per region.
In "Green Street Hooligans," which isn't scheduled here yet, he's a Harvard University expelee who heads for London and becomes involved with soccer thugs.
Getting more attention and box-office is "Everything Is Illuminated," which he made immediately afterward for actor Liev Schreiber, who in this case functioned instead for the first time as screenwriter and director.
It will open Friday at one or two theaters to be announced.
Wood, who turned 24 on Jan. 28, plays a character named for the novel's author, Jonathan Safran Foer. Jonathan is on an odyssey in Eastern Europe to find something of his heritage.
"I was given the script, and I fell in love with it," Wood says. "Liev came out to Los Angeles, and we sat down and had a two-hour conversation mainly about the film and how he conceived of telling the story. He told me how he visualized the character, and he made me want to be part of (the movie)."
One account says Schreiber suggested Wood reference Chauncey Gardiner, a blank slate of a character in Jerzy Kosinski's novel "Being There" whose vagueness inadvertently misleads everyone to believe he's a genius. Peter Sellers played Gardiner in the 1979 film.
"That was one of the first references that Liev made when he was creating" Jonathan within the screenplay Wood says. "I had embarrassingly enough not seen the film, so I watched it when I got to Prague" where "Everything Is Illuminated" was shot.
"That was definitely a good influence. I let the character wash over me, and I saw the comparison, and then from there I developed the character and never referenced it again."
The picture reportedly is missing several fantasy sequences that had been shot.
"Jonathan very much has a fantasy world he lives in which is in direct contrast to how he is in the world around him. It's this wide-open world in his head that references his experiences and his observations.
"We had these fantasies from different perspectives -- even one from the dog. You can do that in a book more easily, though. In the context of the movie, the contrast was so extreme that it almost felt like a different movie every time we went to these fantasies."
Most were omitted before the picture's release.
"The only one that was left in was one at the very beginning where (someone) goes to a dance and has a fantasy of himself as this really cool character and the pinnacle of American culture."
There were, Wood says, no special problems during production -- "No different from any other independent production with no money and no time. Prague is relatively cheap. We all had lovely apartments.
"But it was an ambitious movie and we didn't have a lot of time, so it required a lot of everybody. But at the same time I find that process gratifying. There's something so unifying about independent film in that way. I'm incredibly proud of Liev for his accomplishment. I really so hope he directs again because he's incredibly talented."
Production lasted about 10 weeks, which must have like a blink compared to upwards of three years devoted to the "Rings" trilogy.
"Anything compared to the 'Rings' trilogy is a blink."
Wood grew up on film in an eclectic variety of pictures that includes "The Good Son," "The War," "The Ice Storm" and "Deep Impact." He was The Artful Dodger in a TV production of "Oliver Twist."
For me, the Wood film of most enduring appeal is Barry Levinson's "Avalon" (1990), a portrait of a squabbling, loving Jewish family running an appliance store and navigating holiday reunions in Baltimore in the mid-20th century.
"Of all the films I've worked on, that is among my favorites," Wood says. "It's an incredibly beautiful film. (Levinson) really captures what it means to be in a family and the ups and downs of that. He maps out beautifully how families moved from Eastern Europe to the United States and how they got broken up by the modern age."
New projects?
"I'm in the process of starting a record label called Simian Records. I'm a huge music fan and have been for as long as I can remember, and I just thought the idea of having a label would be interesting and something I could pour my energy into. It also reflects a different passion that I have."
He already has done most of his verbal performance, along with Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman and Robin Williams, for a computer-generated cartoon feature called "Happy Feet," directed by George Miller, who did the "Babe" films and the Pittsburgh-made "Lorenzo's Oil."
"It's all about emperor penguins. My character is a penguin who is born without the ability to sing. Penguins connect with each other by singing" as the current documentary "March of the Penguins" shows.
Wood's penguin in "Happy Feet" "can't sing, but he can tap dance. So he's excised because he's not normal."
Anyone he'd care to work with?
"There are a lot I'd love to work with: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Tilda Swinton, Samantha Morton, Anthony Hopkins, Gary Oldman. I'd love to work with Mark Ruffalo again. We worked on 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' together."
Wood may soon co-star with Hopkins and Demi Moore in "Bobby," an Emilio Estevez screenplay that Estevez is to direct.