I am glad you liked it. So far it is at the top of my list as a favorite of his movies. I adored this movie. #clover#
BTW Here is a little tidbit more about his personal experience(s) and how he related that to the movie etc. etc. It's short and sweet...#clover#
Monday, 09 March 2009
Owen Wilson's journalistic forayOwen Wilson has revealed he had experience of a newsroom before he played a journalist in new film Marley And Me.
The Hollywood star - who shares the screen with Jennifer Aniston in the movie about a real-life couple and their badly behaved pooch - explained he worked at a newspaper when he was young.
"I actually worked as a kid at the Dallas Times Herald, because my dad had worked with [American journalist] Bill Moyers and then his son was working at the Times Herald and I got a job as a runner one summer," he said. "And as a kid it was really exciting to be around in the summertime doing that."Owen - who plays journalist and Marley author Josh Grogan - added: "We filmed at the Florida Sentinel and then in Philadelphia we went to the actual newsroom.
"Talking with John Grogan, I picked up the sense of humor that some of those guys have."
However, Owen has said he has no plans to ditch the acting job for a career on a newspaper, saying: "I'm very happy doing my job." #clover#
Marley And Me is released on March 11.
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Here is another interview with Owen that is very good. It talks about more than just the movie Marley and Me. Happy to be taking the lead Marley & Me: Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston
After the most turbulent 18 months of his life, which included a split from his girlfriend Kate Hudson and an attempt at suicide, things are once again looking up for actor Owen Wilson.
His most recent movie, Marley & Me, a family-friendly doggy picture in which he stars opposite Jennifer Aniston, proved a box office smash when it opened in the US, taking more than $50m during its first four days, by far the biggest figure Wilson has ever recorded in a leading role.
After years in the kooky world of offbeat comedy, the 40-year-old Texan has graduated to the position of viable leading man.
"That wasn't my intention with Marley & Me, no," he offers. "I just liked the fact that the film was held together by the sense of family and the very universal themes - the idea that you get 15 years into a marriage, and you realise where your life is.
advertisement"You see my character in the film regards his friend, who's single and off to work for the New York Times, and he thinks, That looks like a life that's more exciting than the life that I'm having.' "There's a trade-off you make, and an acceptance, and an appreciation of what you have, of being in the moment.
"That's what I liked about the film; I didn't analyse what it could do for my career. I'm not much of a planner in that way."
This comes as no great surprise. Sprawling on a sofa in a sunny LA hotel suite, fiddling occasionally with his blonde locks, Wilson seems most closely aligned with the slacker characters that he's played in a number of films, including Wedding Crashers (2005) and You, Me and Dupree (2006), the latter being the film where he and Hudson first kindled their romantic attraction.
Needless to say, questions about the split, and Wilson's subsequent trip to hospital following an overdose, are taboo.
Today, at least, he seems happy.
"It's like with my character in Marley & Me," he smiles. "He is there wondering where his life is at.
"You think you're unhappy but really you're not.
"My character is that way in the film, but in reality he is actually living his dream. I thought that idea, that yearning, is what was captured so beautifully in the screenplay."
The screenplay is adapted from the best-selling book by journalist John Grogan - a simple true-life tale about the writer and his wife's relationship with their rambunctious dog, an energetic Labrador called Marley - and Wilson understands the writing process only too well.
He has earned a reputation as a comic actor, but he is a serious writer who worked with noted Hollywood director Wes Anderson on the scripts for Bottle Rocket (1996), Rushmore (1998) and The Royal Tenebaums (2001), the last of which earned the pair an Oscar nomination for best screenplay.
He also starred in the first and last of these films and they are the projects that seem to capture the essence of the man.
"There's that great quote," he offers, "from Beckett, I think: He had an abiding sense of melancholy that sustained him through brief periods of joy.' "I like that, because I'm definitely an up-and-down person."
Born in Dallas, Texas, Wilson is the middle of three brothers. Apparently expelled from his Dallas school in the tenth grade, when he stole his teacher's textbook, he was then sent to high school at the New Mexico Military Institute.
His famously wonky nose comes courtesy of an American football injury.
During their youth, the Wilson brothers immersed themselves in movies, although none grew up with a burning desire to crack the world of film. "When I was growing up, I had no huge passion to be an actor or wanting to work in movies," Wilson says. "If I'd thought that was really a possibility, I would have.
"My brothers and I, we saw every movie that came out and always loved going to see movies. It just didn't seem possible to have this life, and I think to have said something like that, people would have thought we were putting on airs. I'm going to Hollywood!' And they'd have been like, Of course you are!'"
Bottle Rocket and Anderson's debut feature, saw on-screen roles for both Owen and the youngest Wilson brother, Luke.
The film was recently released on Criterion DVD and the brothers re-visited the making of' documentary.
"It was kind of odd watching the short film that we made on the disc, and hearing mine and Luke's accents.
"They were so strong! I still have an accent, but Luke's sounded like he was from Gone With the Wind. Totally Southern! I don't know how he made it in Hollywood!"
But make it they both did, with the older of the brothers forging his reputation as an actor via a series of bounding, brash comedy performances.
It was fellow comic Ben Stiller who got the ball rolling, granting him a small role in The Cable Guy (1996). Since then Wilson and Stiller have made nine films together, including Meet The Parents (2000), Zoolander (2001) and Starsky & Hutch (2004), by which time Wilson was earning $10m a picture.
"I owe so much to Ben Stiller, and to Wes Anderson, of course," says Wilson. "They're great friends - I've known Wes for years - and they've played key roles in my career. For me, I think I've always been superstitious with not having plans and just letting things unfold. That just seems to be the way it happened, for me, in my life. Although, saying that, I think there probably is something to be said for planning." He stops, that slacker smile creeping across his face. "Well, maybe."
Marley and Me is on general release from tomorrow.