Shia Labeouf and Miles Teller: back to their roots

In Damien Chazelle’s new musical La La Land, which just earned rave reviews at the Venice Film Festival, Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling sing, dance, and fall in love. It’s the actors’ third film together, after Crazy Stupid Love and Gangster Squad, but when Chazelle first got the project off the ground, neither actor was involved: Instead, he’d cast his Whiplash star Miles Teller opposite Harry Potter actress Emma Watson. That Gosling and Stone came to lead the film feels preordained, but it’s another example of the tenuous art of casting: Many movies almost get made with totally different actors starring, while sometimes the performers who nearly missed the cut for a big role present an intriguing notion of what might have been.

Warren Beatty works at his own deliberate pace, so when he first put together his Howard Hughes comedy Rules Don’t Apply, in 2011, Felicity Jones was cast as the female lead and Beatty met with actors like Shia LaBeouf and Andrew Garfield to play her paramour. After production delays and a studio shuffle, though, Beatty finally shot the film in 2014 with Lily Collins and Alden Ehrenreich (your new Han Solo) as the leads. Source: www.vulture.com

“American Honey” director Andrea Arnold, who generally works with unknown actors, brushed off warnings not to cast LaBeouf in her low-budget film. Drawn to his earlier performance in “Transformers,” she met the actor for the first time several years ago in a café near her home outside London. The next time she saw him was in New York, on the morning after his “Cabaret” arrest, coming from jail and carrying his shoelaces in his hands. “I can never forget his face,” Arnold says. “He was hurting. He was very quiet.”  Arnold never gave LaBeouf a script, just a black and white picture of a forest for inspiration.

“American Honey” offers another milestone for the actor. It’s a performance that started generating Oscar buzz out of Cannes. But he scoffs at the awards chatter. “Nah, dude, not me,” says LaBeouf, who still hasn’t been invited into the Academy, despite having appeared in 30 movies. “The Oscars are about politics. It’s not about who is the best.” The career trajectory he was on as an A-list leading man doesn’t really exist anymore. Instead, he has joined a generation of actors —Jake Gyllenhaal, Kristen Stewart— who have bypassed studio movies for indies. LaBeouf admits that he’s no longer on Hollywood’s wish list for major blockbusters. David Ayer approached him for “Suicide Squad,” for a role that eventually went to Scott Eastwood. LaBeouf says the studio vetoed his casting. “I don’t think Warner Bros. wanted me. I went in to meet and they were like, ‘Nah, you’re crazy.’ It was a big investment for them.”

Labeouf thought Spielberg would be his ticket to a big-screen legacy. “You get there, and you realize you’re not meeting the Spielberg you dream of,” LaBeouf says. “You’re meeting a different Spielberg, who is in a different stage in his career. He’s less a director than he is a f–king company.” (Spielberg declined to comment). LaBeouf felt like there was no room to grow as an actor, and that he was stuck. “Spielberg’s sets are very different,” he says. “Everything has been so meticulously planned. You do that for five years, you start to feel like not knowing what you’re doing for a living.”

It was around this time that he started drinking heavily. “Part of it was posturing,” LaBeouf says. “I never knew how to drink. I never liked to drink. It was a weird post-modern fascination with the f–k-ups.” LaBeouf says that his latest adventure gave him the chance to feel what he’s been chasing—human connection. “You float with people,” he says. “You’ve got to stay malleable.” Source: variety.com

Here’s a brief synopsis of a dye job gone horribly wrong. The person of interest: Miles Teller. The time of incident: Spotted at the ESPYs in July. The embarrassing crime: Botching a blonde dye job. The public reaction: Sheer mockery. Thankfully, Teller’s unfortunate dye job from earlier this summer is now officially a thing of the past. The hair hue change was done in part to help transform Teller into a role for Joseph Kosinski’s movie about the Granite Mountain Hotshots. The film covers the story of 20 firefighters who fought the Yarnell Hill Fire in 2013 and Teller plays the sole survivor who has — you guessed it — blonde hair, according to Entertainment Weekly.

Now with filming wrapped up, though, Miles Teller has gone back to his roots (his brunette hair). He recognizes, too, the wrong he did in switching up his hair and has offered an apology to the public: “Dear Internet, I’m sorry I dyed my hair blonde,” he wrote on Twitter. “I never meant to hurt you. Please accept this apology.” All is forgiven, Teller. Source: nymag.com

Bleed for This (Miles Teller) - Telluride Reviews

“Bleed for This” stars Miles Teller as the boxer who simply wouldn’t quit — the “Pazmanian Devil” who agreed to wear a painful halo brace for six months in hopes that he might heal enough to defend his world-champion title. Teller is terrific, which should come as no surprise to “Whiplash” fans. Ben Younger here finds a piece of material that’s a great fit for his macho, high-energy style — and could soon be the biggest hit of his career. Still, all eyes are on Teller in a role that powerfully reinforces what a charismatic performer he is, whether pummeling an opponent in the ring or flirting with any woman who crosses his path.Teller takes us there, past the bruises and facial scars (makeup mixed with his own), to reveal the fire behind the fighter. Source: variety.com

Miles Teller and Aaron Eckhart attend the Telluride Film Festival on September 3, 2016, in Colorado.

It’s hard to find a genre more cliché-festooned than the boxing film. Ben Younger knows that, and doesn’t so much avoid those clichés as try to artfully re-arrange them the best that he can. But Miles Teller delivers something better than the sum of the film’s clichés. With his bulked-up physique, wispy pencil-thin mustache, and slightly dim reckless intensity, he turns what could have been a cartoon into a real person. Aaron Eckhart, as his hangover-prone trainer, also turns a familiar archetype into a character with three full dimensions. Source: www.ew.com

With executive producer Martin Scorsese figuratively looking over his shoulder, Ben Younger injects the action with as much visual and performance juice as he can muster, stirring interest in a crude, emotionally imprudent and severely flawed man (much as Scorsese often has) and serving up a thick slice of specific ethnic family ways—Rhode Island working class Catholics the likes of which haven’t been much seen onscreen since David O. Russell’s The Fighter six years ago.

As maniacally as he took drum playing to the limit in ‘Whiplash,’ Teller fights ‘til he wins or drops here. His intensity and determination levels are extreme, his proclivity for reckless, unthinking behavior just a bit less so, and the actor cuts a convincing boxer’s figure in the many scenes of training and combat.” Source: www.hollywoodreporter.com

Whiplash feels like young Scorsese—hungry, ambitious, well disciplined, superbly cut. Chazelle understands that good filmmaking means showing command and locking into in the groove—tempo, timing, spirit, pulse. It’s a brash but out-there film that’s necessarily mad and manic. Teller's Andrew is vulnerable, anguished, charismatic, thoughtful. He really doesn’t want to be like his kindly, failed-writer dad (Paul Reiser), and he can’t find peace with a pretty girl (Melissa Benoist) because she isn’t as consumed as he is. Andrew just wants to wail like a champ, and this is how almost all great musicians are. Young Brian Wilson became a self-taught pianist in Hawthorne by playing every day like a crazy man, and ignoring the usual high-school stuff. Source: www.hollywood-elsewhere.com

I was heading down the escalator inside the Chinese/Dolby complex, heading for the orange level in the parking garage. I noticed this shapely ginger-haired girl with some big-shouldered, dark-haired guy standing behind her. Then I realized the guy, who was wearing a powder-blue shirt of some kind, was Miles Teller…. Then ginger girl dropped something and bent over to pick it up just as she and Teller were passing me, and I couldn’t resist checking out. She wasn’t looking so what the hell… right? Except Teller was looking at me. And then the humiliation: “Don’t be a pervert, man.” And he kind of bellowed it. Shamed, I tried a little “oh, no, man… I was just… you know, you and Damien Chazelle… I’m on the team!” But Teller wouldn’t back off, he kept looking at me like I was scum. Typical guy thing: “Hey man, she might be hot but I’m with her so avert your fucking eyes, and keep them averted!” Just another over-protective boyfriend flashing his alpha dominance. The irony is that I never gape at women shamelessly. Teller’s girlfriend Keleigh Sperry was the one I was subtly eyeballing. (Not subtly enough, I mean.)  Teller is cool enough, a serious actor. He is Mitchum, in a way. —Jeffrey Wells in Hollywood Elsewhere 

“I was excited to play the straight guy who actually has more of a moral compass,” Miles Teller recently told IndieWire of his role as David Packouz in War Dogs. “Those aren’t always the parts you’re getting. It’s rare to get a script for [roles for] guys in their young twenties that are actually doing things with big responsibility or a more mature tone.”

“For a lot of the projects I’ve done, it’s taken some foresight and some faith by the director,” Teller said. “When Ben cast me in ‘Bleed For This,’ I think I was just coming off ‘That Awkward Moment’ or something where I’m literally the pale, goofy friend. I don’t think many people had me on a short list to play a five-time world champion Italian boxer.”

“I remember the first project that I was legitimately bummed about. The first thing that I thought I was going to get and I didn’t and I was bummed out was ‘The Descendants.'” Teller read for the role of Sid, the stoner boyfriend of Shailene Woodley’s character, going so far as auditioning for director Alexander Payne, before being beat out by Nick Krause. Even though the memory still stings, Teller has a relaxed attitude towards how things panned out. After all, for Teller, it all comes down to one simple aim: “I just always wanted to be versatile.” Source: www.indiewire.com

David and Efraim are not friends. It’s not friendship. It’s just business. Teller then punches Hill in the face — and one gets the sense here that his David might as well be Todd Phillips himself. One senses that, after a career of playing the cool kid, and of celebrating his jerks as his heroes, Todd Phillips is finally ready to focus on the straight man and the moral center. That, in ostensibly making his Drama About Business, Todd Phillips has finally managed to make his Comedy About Friendship. And that, after all of these years, and all of those movies, Todd Phillips has finally figured out just what it is about friendship he has to say: ‘Don’t be a fucking dick.’ Source: theringer.com

"La La Land" Trailer, "Thank You For Your Service" documentary

La La Land is not only is a love letter to movies, to movie musicals, to romance, and to Los Angeles, but it is also an ode to people with a dream. It is a movie that has roots in Hollywood’s storied past and the golden era of such MGM musicals as Singin’ In The Rain and The Bandwagon, but also as a valentine to the French musicals of Jacques Demy and Michel LeGrand — specifically The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg and The Young Girls Of Rochefort. 

The last purely original musical written for the screen to take Best Picture was Vincente Minnelli’s Gigi in 1958. Minnelli’s films, along with Demy’s and others, were pure inspiration for Chazelle. 

“I remember when I saw The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg for the first time,” he said. “I had never seen a musical that was just as kind of high-flying as the sort of MGM style that it was borrowing from, but dealing with both the highs and lows. There’s something  just so beautiful  and poetic about it, and it’s still probably my favorite movie ever. So I feel like La La Land kind of started there.”

Ryan Gosling plays Sebastian, an aspiring jazz pianist who meets Emma Stone’s character Mia, a waitress working on the Warner Bros lot who aspires to be an actress. Both are superb, showing great musical skills, with Gosling even learning how to play excellent jazz riffs on the piano. The film details the ups and downs of their relationship as each pursues their dreams in the not-always-kind town of Los Angeles. 

Whiplash (starring Miles Teller as Andrew Neiman) worked out nicely, winning big at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival and eventually receiving six Oscar nominations including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay. It won three Oscars and launched Chazelle’s film career into the stratosphere. 

Chazelle added that his dad’s side of the family is all French, like Demy, and he kind of sees what L.A. is like to them. “It’s almost the embodiment of the romantic idea of America, you know, the freeways that go on to infinity, the big horizon, the big sky, the beach, Hollywood, you know the whole thing is so larger than life and so kind of iconic America in their mind. There’s a lot to play with there.” Source: deadline.com

"An American in Paris" (1952) directed by Vincente Minnelli, starring Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron.

"La La Land" (2016) directed by Damien Chazelle, starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone.

La La Land (One of the Most Anticipated New Films of the 2016-17 Oscar Season): With his sophomore effort “Whiplash,” Damien Chazelle proved to be a formidable talent. All eyes are on his follow-up, a musical love letter to Los Angeles set to open this year’s Venice Film Festival. It’s an ambitious genre to tackle these days, but if he handles it with half the aplomb of his 2014 Oscar winner, expect fireworks. Source: variety.com

The Union County Board of Chosen Freeholders will co-sponsor a special screening of "Thank You for Your Service," an award-winning documentary that explores the nation's superficial understanding of war trauma, including PTSD, and the flawed policies surrounding it. The movie will be shown on Wednesday, September 7th beginning 6:30 p.m. at the Hamilton Stage Theatre, 360 Hamilton Street, in Rahway.

The film is being presented as part of Chairman Bergen's UC HERO initiative for 2016, which assists Veterans. The movie has been called "gripping, wrenching, and persuasive" by the Village Voice and "a film every American should see" by the Star Ledger. The Military Times said it is "generating Oscar buzz." The documentary is currently being shown at film festivals around the country, and is scheduled for theatrical release in early October. It won "Best Documentary at the GI Film Festival in DC, and the "Impact Award" at the Illuminate Festival. Source: www.nj.com

Miles Teller as Adam Schumann in "Thank You For Your Service" (2017) directed by Jason Hall.

Shailene Woodley "She's Like a Rainbow" video

A video dedicated to the beautiful and talented actress Shailene Woodley. Soundtrack: "She's Like a Rainbow" by The Rolling Stones, "My Girl" by The Temptations, "My Girl" cover by The Jesus & Mary Chain, "She's not You" & "Stuck on You" by Elvis Presley, and "Baby Baby" by The Vibrators. 

“There is no envy, jealousy, or hatred between the different colors of the rainbow. And no fear either. Because each one exists to make the others’ love more beautiful.” ―Aberjhani, Journey through the Power of the Rainbow: Quotations from a Life Made Out of Poetry

"The beauty of a woman must be seen from in her eyes, because that is the doorway to her heart, the place where love resides." ―Audrey Hepburn

Miles Teller: a man of the people, Political Spectrum: "War Dogs" and "Snowden"

Edward Snowden and Lindsay Mills are on opposite ends of the political spectrum, but they share a great chemistry. A new clip from director Oliver Stone’s Snowden, a biopic about the NSA whistleblower, premiered Friday that shows Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Shailene Woodley strolling past protesters outside the White House with an early date vibe. Mills sides with the anti-war protesters, while Snowden has strong reservations. “I don’t really like bashing my country,” he says. “How about questioning the liberal media? You’re just buying into what one side is saying.”

“Maybe I am, because my side’s right!” Mills retorts. “You are a very frustrating individual, you know what? How am I going to make you see?” After Snowden went into hiding, Mills joined him in Moscow. She even appeared on stage at the 87th Oscars in 2015 when Citizenfour, the documentary about the Snowden leaks, took home the Best Documentary trophy. Source: www.ew.com

Miles Teller showed uncommon depth in the superior 2013 romantic dramedy The Spectacular Now, sharing the Special Jury Award for Acting at Sundance with his co-star, Shailene Woodley. Then came Whiplash. Teller had done some drumming at school, in a church choir and a band called the Mutes. Andrew, his character, was tortured and self-destructive, mercilessly hazed by a bullying teacher (JK Simmons, who won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor).

“I’m a pretty light-hearted person,” says Teller. “So how Andrew carried himself physically, how he related to people, his temperament, all those things couldn’t be further from me. But what I liked about that kid was the fact that he was an underdog.” Teller’s favourite scene was when Andrew charges from behind the drums to flatten his tormentor. “JK cracked a rib,” he laughs. “I’m not proud of it, but after a guy’s slapping you and yelling at you for three weeks straight…! I always dug that scene because he just finally snaps.” And at least Simmons can take comfort from his Academy Award. Teller exhales a plume of smoke, “He owes me one, for sure.”

Teller is engaged, wry and opinionated, especially on gun control in the States and the mental health of soldiers returning from war. “We’ve known how to send guys to war forever, but we really don’t know how to bring them back yet,” he says, citing a statistic that there are 22 veterans committing suicide every day in the US. Teller might act bulletproof, but it’s obvious that the Esquire story really stung him. “Oh, I felt frickin’ helpless, I felt extremely misrepresented, I felt a little angry,” he says, his voice almost cracking. 

“For the average person, they are reading this article, they haven’t met you, they’re like, ‘Oh Miles is an asshole. You didn’t hear it? You didn’t read that Esquire? Yeah, she said he was an asshole – he must be!’ “I’d say that you get a little more guarded but I’m actually not,” he goes on. “Certain times I’ll choose my words very carefully and maybe come off a little more boring. But I also think that’s why certain people do relate to me: because there is no agenda, honestly. I was raised middle-class in a small town. I have all my same friends from high school. I’m close with my family. I’m dating a normal girl. So I want to feel people think I’m a man of the people. Because I feel that way.” The “normal girl” is a bit of a stretch – Keleigh Sperry, his girlfriend of three years, is a model – but the point stands. Source: www.theguardian.com

Miles Teller’s hero of sorts, David Packouz, starts War Dogs a man adrift, working as a masseuse in Miami and trying to build a nest egg by selling high-end bed sheets to old folks homes. That changes when he reconnects with his best bud from 8th grade, Jonah Hill’s Efraim Diveroli, who has found the scam of all scams: undercutting the big boys by lowballing small government military contracts. 

Both as conceived by the screenwriters and played by Teller, Packouz is very Jimmy Stewart, meant to act as the common man to whom we are all supposed to relate. While the Whiplash star is extremely effective at this kind of acting, the real guy was more complicated and interesting: There is no mention of the real Packouz’s musical aspirations, for example, though he does appear in the film playing an acoustic version of "Don’t Fear the Reaper." For his part, Hill once again channels Joe Pesci by way of John Belushi. His high pitched cackle of a laugh—along with his penchant for snorting coke, is meant as shorthand to indicate that his character is a bad guy. Indeed, Diveroli’s greed and lack of loyalty prove to be the pair’s downfall.

The presence of both Hill and the white boy marauders armed with little more than modems and cell phones bring to mind Martin Scorsese’s misunderstood 2013 masterpiece The Wolf of Wall Street. Source: observer.com

David Packouz (Miles Teller), is a Miami Beach college dropout who works as a freelance massage therapist, a job the movie mocks: His big dream? To make a killing selling quality bedsheets to retirement homes. David has to overcome one ethical scruple that, at first, seems relatively minor: He and his fiancé, Iz (Ana de Armas), are against the war. But the moral conundrum at the heart of “War Dogs” starts small and then grows, like a tumor. It’s not just about the politics of war — it’s about the interpersonal worm of lying. “War Dogs” marks a key turning point for Phillips. After all these years of yocks, it’s his first true grown-up movie, and it’s a nimble, gripping, and terrific one, with plenty of laughs, only now they’re rooted in the reality of fear, and in behavior that’s authentically scurrilous. 

The key to it all is that the two actors play it straight. David, tense and calculating, but in way over his head, is our representative, and Miles Teller has the gift of making decency magnetic. As for Hill, amazingly, he forms a direct connection to the audience even though he’s playing an irredeemable, mostly charm-free jerk who may, in fact, be a reckless sociopath. We should, objectively, be repelled by him, but in “War Dogs,” Hill, more than ever, is a true star, with a hellbent charisma that comes from deep within. Phillips, to his credit, doesn’t hit us over the head. He threads the movie’s message through every encounter, until we feel the queasiness of how lying can eat away at us. “War Dogs” lets the audience taste the lure of big easy money, and then says: That’s a hangover you have to wake up from. Source: variety.com

Shailene Woodley, Miles Teller and Ansel Elgort Triangle, "War Dogs" Premiere, "Jonathan"

Actress Shailene Woodley protested the building of an oil pipeline that will run through North and South Dakota. “Because not only are we saying enough is enough to the fossil-fuel industry but we’re saying enough is enough to silence. That’s why this fight is so profound to me.”

The 24-year-old “Divergent” star joined 200 other protesters last week to stop the construction of the $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline, the Bismarck Tribune reports. The project will run 1,100 miles through the Dakotas, and the actress says she is protesting it because she fears it will contaminate the ground water. “It is our responsibility to learn the narrative in which Native Americans recall their own history and are walking their own history, and this is a beautiful opportunity for that,” said Woodley. Source: indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com

Unforgettably, Shailene Woodley once commented that she likes to sunbathe naked to “give my vagina a little vitamin D” and some of her favorite hobbies are bizarre: "I'm obsessed with the morphogenetic field right now. It's fascinating. It's essentially examining genetics through your quantum field and what you can learn from that."

Miles Teller: "Shailene is a great actress and I think that for my love interest I’m lucky that it’s been Shailene. She’s one of the most talented actresses around and it’s easy. She’s just very pretty and I'm very comfortable with her. I don’t know. It’s hard to talk about it. I’m in love with her." Source: collider.com

“Miles: he's like my brother. We love each other a lot and we got each other’s backs.” -Shailene Woodley about Miles Teller

“The Trailblazer Award is for someone who breaks the mold, they said. And that’s absolutely Shailene. I remember right after Divergent came out it was like the biggest movie in the world. And Shailene was the biggest star in the world. I honestly can say I’ve never been in a room with somebody who emits more of a radiant, positive light. Shailene is an incredible force of nature. I’m sure when she gets up here, she’d like to give you all a heart hug, which is where you hug and your hearts touch. But she can’t, so she’ll just accept the award graciously. But, Shailene, I love you. I feel like I’ve written a bunch of speeches for you at this point. I’m always happy to do it, because you’re an incredible actress. And that’s really only matched by your integrity, and who you are as a person.” -Miles Teller presents Shailene Woodley with the MTV 2015 Trailblazer Award

Miles Teller showed his softer side as he got a sweet kiss on the cheek from girlfriend Keleigh Sperry on Monday at the War Dogs premiere in Los Angeles. Miles looked dapper in a tailored blue three-piece suit with white dress shirt and dark skinny tie. Keleigh showed off her model looks in a long black Jovani  dress with front cutout and high thigh split.

The 29-year-old actor and 23-year-old model also hugged each other as they packed on the PDA on the carpet at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. Source: www.dailymail.co.uk

Miles Teller: "Me and my buddies in High School found a spot where we could get graphing calculators pretty cheap and thought there was a good profit margin there, like black market dealing graphic calculators to all of our geometry friends in High School. Some of my best friends are in the military so for me I always look at those things on a more personal level, I look at the people that it’s affecting and not so much globally." Source: collider.com

This week, Jonah Hill and Miles Teller will star in War Dogs, a movie about two white dudes who supply weapons to troops in Afghanistan. We're here to talk about something even more troubling: The fact that, according to the internet, Miles Teller and Ansel Elgort are not the same person.

Until very recently (when I Googled "Who is in War Dogs"), I had been operating under the impression that Miles Teller and Ansel Elgort were, if not the exact same person, at the very least wholly interchangeable, like two elements that could easily be subbed in for one another in a complicated chemical equation without accidentally blowing up the lab. Both are 6-foot-tall-ish and seem to have the kinds of faces that morph based on salt intake. Both have orbited around Shailene Woodley for years and years, playing brothers and boyfriends and dystopian ne'er-do-wells. Both seem to have been named by drunk elves. Source: www.mtv.com

Ansel Elgort has come on board “Jonathan,” playing both twin roles in the independent movie, which is set to begin shooting next month in New York. Bill Oliver is directing from a script he co-wrote with Peter Nickowitz. Randy Manis and Ricky Tollman are producing and Neal Dodson is exec producing. Elgort will portray Jonathan and his twin brother John. Jonathan is a successful architect while John sleeps all day and spends the night socializing and starting to fall in love with a woman. Jonathan forces John to end the relationship, and then starts a new relationship with the woman himself.

Elgort’s credits include (starring Shailene Woodley): “The Fault in Our Stars,” the three “Divergent” films, the upcoming remake of “The Billionaire Boys Club” and “Baby Driver” from director Edgar Wright. He’s been in talks to star in “Dungeons and Dragons” for Warner Bros. Source: variety.com