Rassegna stampa di Ken Kwapis

ONE of Ken Kwapis’s earliest filmgoing memories is watching the 1962 rampaging-monster movie “King Kong vs. Godzilla” at the local drive-in with his father in Belleville, Ill. Or rather, not watching it.
“I was so terrified, I literally hid under the dashboard,” Mr. Kwapis said, recalling how he peeked out from beneath the glove compartment long enough to see the enormous, fire-breathing Godzilla upend a train car filled with screaming passengers. “I’m sure it was a cheesy shot where they just tipped the camera upside down, but to me it was traumatic,” he added, pretending to shiver.
Though Mr. Kwapis has been working as a filmmaker in Hollywood for 25 years, he has not concerned himself with the fundamentals of scaring the pants off of moviegoers. Instead his bailiwick is human-size themes like friendship, love, betrayal, loneliness and heartbreak, whether he is directing movies like “Sexual Life” (which he also wrote) and the coming-of-age drama “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” or television series like “The Larry Sanders Show” and “The Office” (a two-part episode of his will be shown this Thursday and next). These productions all feature large casts and interlocking story lines, and tend to explore how easy it is to speak the exact same language and yet still be totally misunderstood.

In this way Mr. Kwapis’s latest film, “He’s Just Not That Into You,” though it boasts a marquee-busting roster of A-list Hollywood names including Jennifer Aniston and Ben Affleck, fits into his gentle niche. Based on the book of the same name by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo, which offers humorous counsel for women who waste their time with unresponsive men, the movie, written by Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein (“Never Been Kissed”), is a romantic comedy about how hard it can be for the lovelorn to read others’ true feelings accurately.
The film, set to open Friday, follows nine stories of ill-timed attraction among a group of young urban professionals in Baltimore. While a copywriter, Gigi (Ginnifer Goodwin), obsesses about a real estate agent, Conor (Kevin Connolly), he only has eyes for an aspiring singer, Anna (Scarlett Johansson), who in turns lusts after a married lawyer, Ben (Bradley Cooper).
When he first read the script for “He’s Just Not That Into You” in 2007, Mr. Kwapis said, what struck him was that it wasn’t structured like a predictable boy-meets-girl love story. “So often the challenge is you have two people, and you know they’re going to get together,” he said. “It’s just a question of how, and how interesting the journey will be to get there. But what was thrilling about this was it’s so completely character driven. I thought, ‘Wow, what a great opportunity to set all these characters in motion and just sort of observe them.’ “
He said this on a recent Saturday morning over a breakfast of salmon and scrambled eggs at a San Fernando Valley restaurant. With his quiet, adenoidal voice and soft posture, Mr. Kwapis, 51, doesn’t fit anyone’s idea of the shouting, egotistical Hollywood director surrounded by underlings who cower in his presence. Has he ever become unraveled in a meeting?
“It did happen once,” he said. I was screaming into a speakerphone and banging on the table, and the people in the room were astounded that I lost my temper.” Did he learn anything from his trip to the dark side? “It turned out that I’d pounded my fist so hard that I’d disconnected the line,” he said, laughing “For two minutes I was yelling into a dead telephone. It was like a wasted tantrum.”
Nancy Juvonen, one of the producers of “He’s Just Not That Into You,” described Mr. Kwapis as “very, very calm.” (Ms. Juvonen runs Flower Films with Drew Barrymore, who has a small part in the movie.) “I know I sound annoying,” she said, “but he’s such a delight. He’s totally prepared. His crew respects him. No one is in a panic state. There’s no ‘Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God! She won’t come out of her trailer!’ He doesn’t even say ‘Action!’ ” (He doesn’t yell “Cut!” either.)
His unorthodox method dates back to the early ’90s, when he directed the pilot for “The Larry Sanders Show,” the groundbreaking television comedy about the inner workings of a late-night talk show. He and the series’s star and co-creator, Garry Shandling, were in pre-production, he recalled, and “Garry said, ‘I’d love for the actors to feel as if they really weren’t sure when the camera was on or off.’ So I said: ‘Great. I’ll start by never saying ‘Action!’ And I haven’t said it since. I just say” — he made a light shooing motion with one hand — “ ‘Go ahead.’ “
When he was growing up, Mr. Kwapis was a cinema geek who had to rely on Pauline Kael’s New Yorker reviews and his imagination because the films of Ingmar Bergman and Jean-Luc Godard never made it to his hometown. He played catch-up as a film major at Northwestern University and then as a graduate student at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts. In 1985, just before production began on his feature-film directorial debut, “Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird,” he approached Jim Henson for advice on how to coax performances out of hand-operated felt figures. Mr. Henson, he recalled, told him, “Just talk to the puppeteers like they’re actors.”
That was when Mr. Kwapis suddenly realized that for all his accumulated knowledge about focal length and composing shots, there was a gaping hole in his training: actors and acting.
“I don’t want to say that it’s a repudiation, but both of those very strong film departments failed to address the big picture,” he said. “Meaning, ‘How do you put something human on the screen?’ In a weird way that’s what this whole journey has been for me.”
When Mr. Kwapis’s wife of almost 18 years, the writer Marisa Silver, watches his films, she sees her husband in every frame. “I see the kindness of his personality,” Ms. Silver said in a telephone interview. “He’s not a cynic. Ken has a great compassion for people’s foibles, a graciousness about the mistakes people make in life — even with his friends.” Then she added, “But he also really loves the orchestration of a shot, how a tale is told.”
It was at a party in 1986 that Mr. Kwapis met Ms. Silver, a daughter of the filmmaker Joan Micklin Silver. Their conflicting versions of the ensuing courtship, Mr. Kwapis’s reluctance to tie the knot and their eventual marriage became fodder for the 1991 romantic comedy the couple directed together, “He Said, She Said.“
In Ms. Silver’s section the events and dialogue are told from the perspective of a woman (Elizabeth Perkins), confident in her work but insecure about her boyfriend, who is skittish about commitment. But in the first half, which Mr. Kwapis directed, the love story is seen through the eyes of a man (Kevin Bacon) who doesn’t see why anything needs to change.
That this situation mirrors the crisis moment in the longtime live-in relationship portrayed by Ben Affleck and Jennifer Aniston in “He’s Just Not That Into You” is not lost on him. “I feel like I’ve spent most of my life trying to puzzle out women or being confused by them and relationships,” said Mr. Kwapis, who attended St. Louis University High School, an all-boys Jesuit academy, and cannot remember a time when he was not simultaneously entranced and befuddled by the opposite sex.
“I’m still puzzled by women,” he admitted. “They’re as mysterious to me as ever.”
Da The New York Times, 1 febbraio 2009

È un regista che ha vinto molti premi e si muove a suo agio sia nel mondo del cinema che in quello della televisione. Kwapis ha contribuito al lancio delle più innovative commedie televisive degli ultimi dieci anni, infatti ha diretto il pilot della serie The Office della NBC, che ha vinto un Emmy Award, con Steve Carell, John Krasinski e Rainn Wilson. Ha ricevuto una candidatura agli Emmy per la regia della prima puntata della terza stagione di The Office, intitolata Gay Witch Hunt, e recentemente ha diretto l‘episodio speciale in due parti, Lecture Circuit, in onda a febbraio. Kwapis ha diretto anche i pilot della serie The Larry Sanders Show della HBO e di The Bernie Mac Show, della FOX. Ha anche ottenuto un‘altra candidatura agli Emmy per il suo impegno come produttore e regista di Malcolm in the Middle della FOX e per il suo contributo agli episodi della serie molto apprezzata Freaks and Geeks della NBC. Per il grande schermo, Kwapis ha diretto il successo Quattro amiche e un paio di jeans, tratto dal romanzo best seller di Ann Brashares, con Amber Tamblyn, America Ferrera, Blake Lively e Alexis Bledel. Fra i suoi lavori più importanti ricordiamo le commedie romantiche Licenza di matrimonio, con Robin Williams, Mandy Moore e John Krasinski; L‘amore è un trucco, con Fran Drescher; Dice lui, dice lei, con Kevin Bacon e Elizabeth Perkins, ideato e diretto insieme alla moglie, Marisa Silver, Dunston – Licenza di ridere, con Jason Alexander e Faye Dunaway; Il segreto della piramide d‘oro, con Jeff Goldblum e Cyndi Lauper; e Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird, con i Muppets di Jim Henson. Sexual Life è stato il primo impegno di Kwapis come sceneggiatore e regista. Tratto da La Ronde di Arthur Schnitzler, Sexual Life è stato presentato al Los Angeles Film Festival e mandato in onda da Showtime nel 2005. Nel cast Anne Heche, Elizabeth Banks e Kerry Washington. Kwapis ha studiato regia alla Northwestern University e alla University of Southern California. Ha vinto uno Student Academy in Dramatic Achievement con il film realizzato come tesi For Heaven‘s Sake, un adattamento dell‘opera comica di Mozart Der Schauspieldirektor (The Impresario).

È un regista che ha vinto molti premi e si muove a suo agio sia nel mondo del cinema che in quello della televisione.
Kwapis ha contribuito al lancio delle più innovative commedie televisive degli ultimi dieci anni, infatti ha diretto il pilot della serie The Office della NBC, che ha vinto un Emmy Award, con Steve Carell, John Krasinski e Rainn Wilson. Ha ricevuto una candidatura agli Emmy per la regia della prima puntata della terza stagione di The Office, intitolata Gay Witch Hunt, e recentemente ha diretto l‘episodio speciale in due parti, Lecture Circuit, in onda a febbraio. Kwapis ha diretto anche i pilot della serie The Larry Sanders Show della HBO e di The Bernie Mac Show, della FOX. Ha anche ottenuto un‘altra candidatura agli Emmy per il suo impegno come produttore e regista di Malcolm in the Middle della Fox e per il suo contributo agli episodi della serie molto apprezzata Freaks and Geeks della NBC.

Per il grande schermo, Kwapis ha diretto il successo Quattro amiche e un paio di jeans, tratto dal romanzo best seller di Ann Brashares, con Amber Tamblyn, America Ferrera, Blake Lively e Alexis Bledel. Fra i suoi lavori più importanti ricordiamo le commedie romantiche Licenza di matrimonio, con Robin Williams, Mandy Moore e John Krasinski; L‘amore è un trucco, con Fran Drescher; Dice lui, dice lei, con Kevin Bacon e Elizabeth Perkins, ideato e diretto insieme alla moglie, Marisa Silver, Dunston – Licenza di ridere, con Jason Alexander e Faye Dunaway; Il segreto della piramide d‘oro, con Jeff Goldblum e Cyndi Lauper; e Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird, con i Muppets di Jim Henson.
Sexual Life è stato il primo impegno di Kwapis come sceneggiatore e regista. Tratto da La Ronde di Arthur Schnitzler, Sexual Life è stato presentato al Los Angeles Film Festival e mandato in onda da Showtime nel 2005. Nel cast Anne Heche, Elizabeth Banks e Kerry Washington. Kwapis ha studiato regia alla Northwestern University e alla University of Southern California. Ha vinto uno Student Academy in Dramatic Achievement con il film realizzato come tesi For Heaven‘s Sake, un adattamento dell‘opera comica di Mozart Der Schauspieldirektor (The Impresario).