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Olivia Wilde - Blog Posts
Web Shoutout: Off Camera with Sam Jones
Welcome to Web Shoutout, a series highlighting interesting places in the interwebs about movies and filmmaking! (Check out the previous Web Shoutout here).
Off Camera is a show, podcast, and magazine hosted by photographer Sam Jones. It is an amazing interview show, with various guests from the entertainment industry--mostly from actors.
Off Camera always provides a fascinating look inside their heads. Sam Jones is a brilliant host--naturally inquisitive, respectful, and is always well-researched--and with his help, we are able to truly understand his guests as a human being: what drives them, what influenced them, what makes them tick. His guests include Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jake Gyllenhall, Andrew Garfield, Ellen Paige, Krysten Ritter, Aaron Paul, Cindy Crawford, Aubrey Plaza, Matt Damon, Tatiana Maslany, Imogen Poots, and a lot of others.
If you remember the Actors on Actors interviews that I mentioned a while back, it’s a bit hard to pinpoint the difference between the two because themes vary with each conversations. But if I can summarize, Actors on Actors usually talk about their craft and how they do it, while Off Camera talks about their experiences as a person and why they do what they do. Either way, both are fascinating interviews, and Off Camera is well worth checking out.
Off Camera is a show on DirecTV and U-verse, and is also fully available on their website to watch with a fee. Short excerpts are available on Youtube, but sadly not the full interview. Five of the seven seasons are also available as a full audio interview on Soundcloud.
1. Kristen Bell: "I Grew Up Thinking The World Was Black and White"
2. Dax Shepard Shares Painful Relationship with His Dad
3. What No One Told Ethan Hawke About Being Famous
4. Olivia Wilde Knew She'd Be an Actress
5. Tony Hawk on Talent vs. Motivation
Review: People Like Us (2012)
Rating: 8.0 of 10
People Like Us is story about one Sam (Chris Pine), a twenty-something salesman who had to come home for his father's funeral who he hated, and discovered that his father had another family and another daughter (Elizabeth Banks) that he knew nothing about.
Imagine the brattiness of Captain James Kirk from 2009's Star Trek (who Chris Pine also played), put the character in a funeral and family drama, and basically you'll get something exactly like People Like Us. The lead character Sam was something that all of us like to hate: an alpha-type, cocky, over-achiever, money-chasing salesman who would put a bulldozer through a church and the books of law if it fit his needs. Elizabeth Banks' Frankie, meanwhile, was something of a different breed: a single mother struggling to meet her needs and put her life in order.
People Like Us is a simple story about people trying to connect with each other. No gimmicks, no obvious twist-and turns (aside from the core premise); it's just one of those quietly engaging films about people who have no idea why they're doing what they're doing. We get to slowly understand the father and what his family went through his life, as we get to know Sam's mother (Michelle Pfeiffer) and her past, his job, Sam's childhood, and Frankie's life in general. Those details, scattered throughout the movie like a puzzle of life, put layers into the characters in a seemingly obvious family drama. It put a sense of earnestness in an otherwise heavy-handed film.
TL;DR Written and directed by Alex Kurtzman (yes, that Alex Kurtzman. Roberto Orci, his screenwriting partner also wrote in this film.), People Like Us is not a perfect movie, but it's a surprisingly layered one. In all honesty, your enjoyment of this movie might depend on how much you tolerate Chris Pine's Sam (Olivia Wilde is still underused, though), but if you like family drama it's not a bad movie to spend your time with.
are u a larry?
i’m not a larry. i’m not an anti. i support whatever relationship h is happy in. be it olivia or louis. if he is happy i’m happy.
i’ve talked about before you can read that here if you want to know more
Don’t Worry Darling by Olivia Wilde (2022)