The Point Radio: Constructing BEAUTIFUL CREATURES

We begin our look at the new film, BEAUTIFUL CREATURES, first talking with creators Kami Garcia and Margret Stohl, then director Richard LaGravenese who moved the project from book to film and actor Jeremy Irons who steps into a key role. Plus Marvel tries its hand at the romance game and the JLA movie hits a road block. Take us ANYWHERE! The Point Radio App is now in the iTunes App store – and it’s FREE! Just search under “pop culture The Point”. The Point Radio  – 24 hours a day of pop culture fun for FREE. GO HERE and LISTEN FREE on any computer or on any other  mobile device with the Tune In Radio app - and follow us on Twitter @ThePointRadio.

Transcript

Hello, it's Mike Raub. Welcome to The Point where all parts of pop culture come together. Well, is it the next Twilight? Maybe. Is there going to be a big movie? For sure. We begin our look at beautiful creatures with the folks who began it all, and they're here to talk about how it got started. Plus, these see ads and some tracks from the new 52, and a couple of Marvel girls just looking for love. Let's get to The Point.

The Point, The Point Radio, get The Point Radio. The new movie Beautiful Creatures is being called by some the next Twilight. But nevertheless, it still has an interesting story that takes place well before it even gets to the big screen. And it begins with the original authors, Kemi Garcia and Margaret Stoll, who, as they admit, had no idea what they were getting into. We started trading fantasy books back and forth, and we are exactly like the 60 percent of our genre who are adults who read young adults fantasy for fun.

And that's who we were. So we traded books back and forth. We had a long lunch where we cooked up a world based on a fantasy idea. And also, Kemi's family is from a small town in the south. My family is from a small town in the west. But we both come from what we call the casserole belt, cream of country, and a great tradition of storytelling.

And we kind of cooked up this story that was really in response to what her students and my kids had been saying they wanted. They had a really specific rule set. They said, we love all the vampire books we've read, but we're tired of vampires now. Like, that's been done. No vampires, no werewolves. They really wanted to see a book written from the boy's perspective where the boy was, you know, regular mortal and the girl was the one with the supernatural powers because they were like, why is the girl always, you know, she gets to fall in love.

She doesn't get to have any magic. And they also wanted it to feel like it was not generic. It wasn't. It couldn't take place in any city. They wanted it to have a very specific sense of place. And we didn't write the book to be published. We like cooked up this idea like, well, why isn't anyone doing that? We could do that. And we, you know, came up with the idea and we never in a million years thought it would become like a book in bookstores.

No, we went home and I told my daughter, Mrs. Garcia and I are going to write a book. And she was like, yeah, right. After that, things just took off. And it started going around virally and it was like the more they liked it, it was kind of like addictive. I mean, the more excited they were, the more excited we were writing. And we never thought about like in the end, we just wanted to like tell the story.

And they kept saying, well, you know, when you finish this one, you know, you're going to have to write the next one because we know, you know, you have more ideas for this bigger story. And we and then when we were done, it had gone virally through several high schools like where their friends, you know, attended. And we had this really brilliant idea that we were going to build a fancy website and put up online for free. So other teams could read it. And my friend is a middle.

How much we knew about publishing writer named Sudan. And was Pash said, you are so stupid. Just stop right there. And without telling us, he sent it to his agent. So the whole getting published thing that just was an accident without us, which is, you know, and then before we knew it, it was it sold to be a movie before it published.

It, you know, it was it was the number one in one country. I think before it was published in 48 countries. Now it was the number one book on Amazon's teen list, the number five book on their adult list. We didn't know Amazon had. I was like, what's their editor's top 100?

What are we even talking about? We didn't know anything about the whole industry. We were just readers, parent, teacher, friend. I was still teaching. She was still writing video games.

Like I had a two month old baby. Like it's not like we had writer friends and we were like part of this industry. They're calling us telling about lists. And you're you're nominated for the American Library Association debut author award with a sticker. And I was like, what?

Yeah. Like I said to Margie, like I kept saying, like, there must be a miscount. And from there, end of the movies, they told us the book was being auctioned. And can we said that when we hung up the phone, she said, that's terrible news. And I said, I thought it was good news.

And she said, no, that's how they sell the pigs. Nobody wanted at the end of the fair in the South. I was like, it's totally bad. That's about how much we knew. So we've learned a lot in four years and four books next on board of the process.

Writer, director Richard LaGravinase, who talks about how he got involved. I I sought it out, actually. I was looking for a mythology book, something to do like this. And I wanted to keep the thing as real and as honest as possible. And I wanted to attract great actors.

And what the authors did very, very well. But when you're starting mythology, there's a lot of exposition. There are a lot of rules. There's a lot of things in there that you can't put up into a screen. The experience of reading a book is interactive.

You have your own imagination combined with all these words and all these images that you're being given. But when you make it a film, it's literal. So having a lot of that stuff being told, having actors tell you stuff all the time is difficult. So I had to combine stuff, make it shorter. And I wanted to stay away from things that I've seen before.

So I wanted Viola Davis was the first actress I had wanted to play, Amma. And I knew that playing it as written, it was a part that we've seen before in film. So I combined those two characters of the librarian, Marion and Amma, to make her an elegant seer, maybe something we haven't quite seen before. And in general, with Amma Thompson, I didn't want visual effects to tell the whole story.

I wanted performances and actors to tell you that. I mean, you have actors of this caliber, these talents, you don't need a lot of effects to get your story across. So Amma Thompson plays a fundamentalist right-wing woman who was then inhabited by the darkest castor witch of us all.

And you only know that through Amma's performance, through the change of her voice, through how she's performing, which is such a thrill. It's just so wonderful to watch that. As more folks joined the cast, Richard advised them all not to pick up the original books and to approach their characters totally fresh.

As in the case of actor Jeremy Irons, who said that was fine with him. Absolutely. I'm never more grateful than the press if you don't have to read the book. I remember when I was doing Kafka with Steve Soderbergh, and he saw my reading material and said, Oh God, don't read all that of all my Kafka.

He said, you won't need to read that. In fact, I did. But on this occasion, I came straight off another shoot to do this film. I couldn't read the books. I couldn't read the one book, let alone the four books. So I was very happy to obey him. And I came into a production that was really up together.

They had designed most of the clothes, made most of the clothes. My accent had been chosen by the voice coach. So I just sort of slipped in and talked to Richard and said, Tell me about this man. We know what is he. What does he need to do? What does he, what's his sort of background? What do you feel about him?

And then try to do what was required. I'll talk more with Beautiful Creatures cast members, Zoey Deutsch, Emily Rossum, and Thomas Mann as well. In the meantime, Beautiful Creatures opens in theaters on the 14th. Here it is. The very latest in pop culture.

NBC has set the date for the final episode of The Office. The nine season run ends on May 16th with an hour long episode. As far as what that episode will contain, no word at all on that. All those strong rumors are out there that Steve Carell will not take part in the finale. By the way, that last show, the 200th episode of The Office.

And while they were out announcing this, NBC also gave an extra episode to Chicago Fire, bringing their first season up to 24 episodes and a fairly decent chance that it will be renewed for season two over the next few weeks. Well, how's your website looking? If it's doing pretty well,

you might want to consider entering it in the Geeky Awards, which will take place with a number of categories that include most impressive geeky collection, best site and best blog visual design. Also, use your experience, blog content, all sorts of interesting awards as well. There's also a chance for you to get involved as a sponsor too,

and you can get more information at geekyawards.com. According to ComScore's mobile lens service, 125.9 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones at the end of last year. And of course, Android was number one with that, believe it or not.

53.4% of the smartphones in the U.S. are Androids. And right behind that, of course, Apple's iPhone at 36.3%, with a 2% jump over the last time the survey was taken, which was in September of last year. DC has leaked word on two new titles coming to the new 52 universe.

The movement will be by Gail Simone and Freddie Williams III, and Green Team will be by R. Valdazar and Franco as well. Both are not necessarily superhero titles, but termed political activist books as well. Gail's book is an original concept,

but the Green Team is based on the Joe Simon, Jerry Granadetti creation for DC. Back in the 70s, it ran one issue in the first issue specials series then. And of course, the characters have made a couple appearances since then, in Animal Man and an Ambush Bug series as well. No official on sale date for either series,

but more than likely they'll be appearing in the late spring of this year. And to make room for all this, a number of new 52 titles are being cancelled, some of which you already knew about, like Savage Hawkman. But now add to that list Deathstroke, Fury of Firestorm, Ravagers, Sword of Sorcery, and Team 7 as well.

Once the latest with the Justice League movie project, well, nothing really positive. Rumors were surfacing a few weeks ago that Warner Brothers was planning on holding off moving forward on this, just until they could see how Man of Steel would do at the box office later this year.

And now according to Badass Digest, Will Beale's Justice League script may have been tossed out the window too. That script, of course, was the center on Dark Side and a giant cosmic threat that were supposedly bringing the Justice League together. Chalk it up to that synergy that execs always love to talk about,

but Hyperion Books, which is part of Disney, is now announcing publication of a couple of romance novels featuring Marvel heroines. One of these novels will be dedicated to She-Hulk, the other to Rogue, and both will be available in bookstores in June. It looks like our new Star Wars universe is going to be a little bigger than we thought.

CEO of Disney Bob Iger on CNBC said that not only is the studio working on the new Star Wars trilogy, but also two stand-alone films as well, both being written by Lawrence Kasdan and Simon Kidberg, who also were supposed to be involved with the trilogy at one point in time. And the character at the center of one of these stand-alone films will be Yoda,

that according to a report on Aided Cool News. No directors yet for these stand-alone films, but as you know, J.J. Abrams recently was signed to direct Episode 7, the first part of the new trilogy for Disney. New to the reboot list, Ironside,

a remake of the 1960s NBC drama that of course starred Raymond Burr as a police detective who ends up in a wheelchair after being shot. In the reboot, it's Blair Underwood, who will star in this. More than likely, we'll hear more about it during pilot season. That's it for the podcast.

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