The Chung Hua Telecom building on Ai-Kwo Road. 8:30 in the morning. The coffee is prepared, and workman scurry around preparing a movie back drop for the satellite conference room. The room itself is institutional and bland. Brown carpet, brown paneling, brown theater seats, and a very large brown conference table. I am shown my spot behind the twelve foot long table, and stare up at the wide screen TV. In front is a camera pointed directly at me, and behind is a camera pointed at the screen. "Five minutes," the producer says.
When Taipei Entertainment News and Warner Brothers Taiwan contacted me to talk with Jodie Foster about her new movie, I jumped at the chance. Not only is she is one of the most influential women in Hollywood today, she is also one of the hardest working. To date she has been in thirty six movies. She will be thirty five in November. By the time she was eight, she had already been in over forty commercials. The fourteen year old young actress had ten movies behind her when she landed her role in Martin Scorcese's, Taxi Driver, and her first Oscar nomination.
With two Oscars on her bookshelf, a page long list of movies, and now her own production company, Egg Pictures, backed with $100 million from PolyGram Filmed Entertainment, Foster is one of the most powerful women in Hollywood. In two minutes she will be looking at me looking at her from the wide screen TV. We will have ten minutes to talk about her new upcoming movie, Contact, a sci-fi thriller, based upon the novel by Carl Sagan.
A voice comes from an overhead speaker. "Taipei? Can you hear us."
"Yes. Loud and clear. Can you hear us?"
"Perfectly fine. Are you ready to begin? Ms. Foster is ready in the studio." I look around to see who's in charge and ask if we're ready. Several people nod eagerly.
"We're ready," I say. The screen blinks, a Warner Brothers logo appears, and then there she is.
She is wearing a sharp black jacket and a white silk T-shirt. Her hair is perfectly cut at chin length, and her lips are done in dark red. The first thing that strikes you are the colors. Red, white, blue. Her skin is so white, and her eyes are a deep deep blue. She looks like a movie star from the forties. Maybe Lauren Bacall. Friendly, sharp, vulnerable, but tough. There is a image of the Hollywood sign behind her. "Hello, Taipei!" she says. A bright smile breaks the awkward two-second delay.
CW: Hello Ms. Foster. You're with us live here in Taipei. It's a pleasure to be speaking to you today.
JF: Great. Thank you very much, Corbett! [She lets out an unassuming giggle, sounding more like a coed than a multi-million dollar Hollywood player]
CW: Well, I'll jump right into it. You know, your recent roles really leave the viewer thinking. The Accused, Silence of The Lambs, Nell. There's a lot of humanity in your roles, and there's always a message. A very clear message. What message are you sending us this time in your new movie, Contact?
JF: [Laughs] Well I'm not sure it's just me sending the message. Hopefully it's Carl Sagan and his legacy. The film very much speaks in his voice. I think that, one of the greatest moments in the movie is this idea that science and religion, two very important parts of who we are as human beings, as a species, that these two things can coexist harmoniously. And I think that's the great message of the movie.
CW: So what was it like working with Carl Sagan?
JF: Oh, it was a great moment. A really special moment of my life that I'll never forget. He was a great man, a great dreamer. A very passionate, romantic soul, and you never would use those words to apply to a scientist. He made science feel like falling in love. And I think the film really reflects that.
CW: After seeing the film, which touches on such topics as the universe, religion, god, and science. You see all these satellite dishes and computers and monitors and things. How were you able to bring all that technology down to more human term in your role of Ellie?
JF: Yeah, it's hard isn't it? It's hard making a very technical movie, a lot of blue screen, a lot of visual effects, and a lot of very technical dialogue, and to try above all else to make it feel human and passionate and warm and romantic and Latin and kind of Italian. That's something that I worked on a lot.
CW: Well, you really succeeded. You know, with over thirty movies to your credit now, you've been in this business over twenty-five years haven't you?
JF: I think I've been in the business thirty-two years. [Laughs]
CW: There's a quote I read, I was doing some surfing on the Internet about you, and it said something about "If you've been in the business as long as I have, over twenty-five years, and have this much drive, then you really really know Jodie Foster." Is that true?
JF: Um, well yeah, I guess I do have a lot of drive. But at least it's more well directed now. [Laughs] You know, when you're younger, when your in your twenties, I think you want to do everything. You want to be president, you want to be a rock musician, you want to be a nuclear physicist, and a priest, or whatever. I think what's nice about being in your thirties is that you can pick the things you want to focus on, and focus on them with as much excellence and specificity as you can.
CW: So what is Jodie Foster now, in 1997? What does she want to be?
JF: What do I want to be when I grow up? [Laughs] I really want to be a better director. I really loved making my two films as a director, and it's something that I'm very young at. I've only made two movies, and I really have a lot to learn. It's the thing that centers me the most and it makes me feel the most sane, and I think reveals the most about myself, and about my connection with the rest of the world.
CW: We know that you have your own production company, Egg?
JF: Yes, Egg Pictures.
CW: Now what does Egg Pictures mean? Is there a meaning behind that?
JF: [Smiles brightly] Well you know, it's up to you. You can have any kind of interpretation that you want. In terms of a name, you know, Egg is as good as any other. It's short, and describes the creative experience. The original experience. The cosmological experience. It's a very feminine symbol of course. In our business, I think it's very important to protect creativity from commercial concerns before it's ready. So I guess it's somewhat like the gestation process, where you, you know, "protect" the creative process with this thin but strong-layered egg, and try to keep vultures away.
CW: In your business, working in Hollywood, you are a very successful actress, and now a director, in a male-dominated movie industry, you must have a driven, passionate, and I heard, a "no fear, no holds barred" personality. Is that true?
JF: [Laughs loudly] Oh I don't know about that! I don't consider myself a very brave person, but I love films. I love movies. You know, I would do anything on a movie set. I would be happy being a third assistant cameraman or someone who make cappuccinos on a movie set. I just like being on a movie set, and I like being a part of films because they've changed my life so much. And if that's the one thing that fuels my drive, I would have to admit that that would be it.
CW: What happens on a movie set for you? We heard that you move around a lot, and that there's a black box, your production box, with a lot of things that you put into it which you take from set to set. Can you tell us what's in the box?
JF: Oh right. Yeah, there are a couple things....the truth is that when I make movies I like this one suitcase that I bring with me. It has, you know, a picture of my dog. It has a really good omelet pan. I have one pair of jogging pants that I like better than any other pair. I bring my Stairmaster and some equipment like that, and some cookbooks, and they travel around with me so I don't feel like I'm stranded in some hotel room somewhere.
CW: Getting back to the movie. In "Contact" you really bring a role of femininity into the hard-core scientist stereotype. How did you do it? Because I look at the movie and it is very technical, but you manage to make it feel human.
JF: [Laughs] Well it is a technical world, and there are a lot of woman scientists who live in a very technical world. Of course they've only been accepted into the scientific community recently. In the last ten or fifteen years, you'd be hard pressed to find a woman astronomer. And she [Ellie] brings, just as any male astronomer would bring, this passion to find out what's out there. You know, that's the most basic concern we have. It's as basic as eating or sleeping. We need to know, "Are we alone?" That's something that is just as much a part of scientists and their expectations of the universe as it is religious figures and their expectations of the heavens.
CW: So Ms. Foster, are we alone?
JF: Well, I really don't know! But I would say if I was playing the odds, the odds are we're not alone. It would be very arrogant to think that this little tiny speck of dirt, which we are in the midst of this huge huge huge huge bundle of galaxies, that we should be so unique, that as small as we are, there's no one else out there besides us. I think it would be quite arrogant to believe that.
CW: "It sure would be a waste of space if we were all alone," Ellie says in the movie.
JF: Yes, to quote my line in the movie, that's absolutely right.
CW: Well it looks like our time today is about up. I just wanted to thank you for sharing your thoughts with your audience here in Taiwan.
JF: Thank you very much. To everybody in Taiwan, hello, and I hope you enjoy my movie "Contact."
Then just like that, our conversation ground to a halt. My work was done, and the microphone was taken from off of my shirt. Time was up. Directors started milling around, and Jodie Foster's image was replaced by a black screen sporting the Warner Brothers logo. I slipped out of the Chung Hua Telecom building around the corner to a hot "doh-jang" restaurant, and wondered if it mattered to anyone there that I just chatted with one of the most important players in Hollywood. The oily bread stick came and a dog sat next to me. I guess not. It would be quite arrogant to believe that.
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