This week we got the chance to speak with Gene Dolgoff, known for his invention of the LCD projector, digital projection in general, and his new device that’s up on Fundable right this minute. As he’s more than ready to let you know, he’s also got an incredibly fun fact up his sleeve: he inspired Gene Roddenberry to create the holodeck in Star Trek. It’s from there you’ll find yourself a bit intrigued with the next step in our current abilities to present 3D video and images through our own devices – with help of 3-D Vision technology that Dolgoff presents here and now.
We shot a few pointed questions at Dolgoff before he jumped right in on his Reddit AMA which, we’ll vouch for, is certainly going on today right here: [Ask ]. Have a peek at what we got to know about the project as it’s being developed for the consumer world as we speak.
SlashGear: What’s your ultimate goal with 3-D Vision technology?
Gene Dolgoff: I have been involved in the effort to promote 3-D to the world since the beginning of the 1960s. Now that the world is finally catching up, but is stalled when it comes to consumer 3-D at home (for TVs, computers, projectors, and handheld devices), I want to break that logjam with our revolutionary technology and move the world to the next level so that everyone can view and make 3-D anytime and anywhere they want.
SG: Will the device being released in the Fundable program you’ve got up right now require special eyewear for the user to see 3D? Or will the output completely depend on the device it’s working with?
GD: Our Instant 3-D Converter(TM) is currently designed to use special 3-D glasses. One type is for use with any TV set and the other type is for use with computers and handheld devices. We include one pair of each type of 3-D glasses with the converter (additional glasses will also be sold separately).
SG: What are the limits of the video content 3-D Vision technology can convert successfully?
GD: Our Instant 3-D Converter can convert any video content to 3-D instantly with high quality. Our inputs are composite, component, VGA, and HDMI.
SG: Why did you choose to work with Fundable rather than seeking out funding via traditional means?
GD: We have a business plan and even a draft private placement memorandum and are starting to talk to potential investors. However, that route is typically a slow route, and we want to get this technology out as quickly as possible. Crowd funding potentially provides a faster route for initial funding if your product and company meets the right criteria (which I think ours does).
I had been talking with the founders of fundable.com since before they launched their site. We all felt that, working together, we could be beneficial to each other both in raising some initial capital in a relatively short period of time, and in demonstrating consumer interest, which can be very important in influencing potential conventional investors.
SG: What are your plans for projects beyond this one? Will you continue your work towards a real Star Trek holodeck situation?
GD: We do have other consumer-oriented as well as commercial 3-D products in the pipeline, and will intend to continue to develop them into products and large markets. If we are successful enough to produce the kind of funding needed, we will continue to also pursue the development of holodeck-like products and applications.
Stay tuned as we follow this project through to full funding and beyond! Also be sure to check out the 3-D Vision Fundable project right now and toss in some cash for early access to the device!
This week we had a brief chat with Will Powell, a developer responsible for some rather fantastic advances in the world of what Google has suddenly made a very visible category of devices: wearable technology. With Google’s Project Glass nearer and nearer reality with each passing day, we asked Powell how his own projects were making advances at the same time, and how he saw advances in mobile gadgets as moving forward – and possibly away from smartphones and tablets entirely.
Those of you unfamiliar with Powell’s work, you can hit up the following three links and see the videos of the projects he’s done throughout this post. Some of the products Powell uses are the Vuzix STAR 1200 AR glasses, Raspberry Pi – the fabulous miniature computer, and of course, a good ol’ fashioned ASUS Eee Pad Transformer.
SlashGear: Where you working with wearable technology before Google’s Project Glass was revealed to the world?
Powell: Yes at Keytree we were working with wearable technology before the unveiling of project glass. I was working on CEO Vision a glasses based augmented reality that you could reach out and touch objects to interact or add interactive objects on top of an iPad. I have also had lots of personal projects.
SG: What is your ultimate goal in creating this set of projects with Raspberry Pi, Vuzix 1200 Star, etc?
P: I would say that the ultimate goal is really to show what is possible. With CEO Vision at Keytree we showed that you could use a sheet of paper to interact with sales figures and masses of data using the SAP Hana database technology. Then creating my own version of project glass and now extending those ideas to cover translations as well, was just to show what is possible using off-the-shelf technology. The translation idea was to take down barriers between people.
SG: Do you believe wearable technology will replace our most common mobile tech – smartphones, laptops – in the near future?
P: Yes I do, but with an horizon of a couple of years. I think that with the desire for more content and easier simpler devices, using what we are looking at and hearing to tell our digital devices what we want to find and share is the way forward. Even now we have to get a tablet, phone or laptop out to look something up. Glasses would completely change this because they are potentially always on and are now adding full time to at least one of our fundamental senses. Also many of us already wear glasses, according to Vision Council of America, approximately 75% of U.S. adults use some sort of vision correction. About 64% of them wear eyeglasses so people are already wearing something that could be made smart. That is a huge number of potential adopters for mobile personal information delivery.
I think we still have a way to go with working out how everything will fit together and how exactly we would interact with glasses based technology. With the transition from a computer to tablets and smartphones we opened up gestured with glasses we have the potential to have body language and real life actions as interaction mechanisms. And it would be the first time that there is no keyboard. There is also the potential for specifically targeted ads that could end up with us having some parodies come true. However, I do think we will have an app store for a glasses based device in the next few years.
SG: What projects do you have coming up next?
P: I have many more ideas about what glasses based applications can be used for and am building some of them. I am creating another video around translation to show the multi lingual nature of the concept. Further to that, we are looking at what areas of everyday life could be helped with glasses based tech and the collaboration between glasses users. The translation application highlighted that glasses are even better with wide adoption because Elizabeth could not see the subtitles of what I was saying without using the TV or tablet.
Stick around as Powell’s mind continues to expand on the possibilities in augmented reality, wearable technology, and more!
LeVar Burton has to take a moment. He pauses, dabs his eyes with a tissue, taking it all in: the washed-out white room, over-exposed by the sun, filled with journalists, industry reps and friends in rows of folding chairs, red, orange, yellow, green and blue. Large balloons hang from the corners of the room, dressed up like hot air balloons, carrying small, empty baskets. A guitar sits next to an amp off the corner of the stage while the Reading Rainbow logo beams on a flatscreen monitor, largely unchanged since its heyday a quarter-century ago. Burton, too, appears mostly unchanged since those days, aside from closer-cropped hair, more neatly manicured facial hair and a smart, mustard suit jacket.
There’s plenty to be emotional about, of course, hitting the stage on the tail of an introduction by producer Mark Wolfe, who calls Burton, “my best friend.” The return of Reading Rainbow – now in the form of an iPad app – has been a long time coming, the beloved children’s series having been largely MIA since being pulled from the airwaves in 2009, after a 26-year run. “This is two years in the making,” Burton begins in his familiarly gentle cadence as we sit down for an interview roughly an hour later, “and I’m really just overwhelmed with the response. It’s like making a movie. You’re just so close to it and you sometimes lose perspective, you can’t see the forest for the trees, that sort of thing. There’s so much that’s gone into it, so much work, so much sweat, so much blood.”
A lot, certainly, has gone into the launch, Burton singling out theme song composer Steve Horelick and singer Tina Fabrique in the audience. “It’s my first time meeting her in-person,” he explains, extending a hand to bring her up on stage. “Butterfly in the sky,” she begins, as though not a single day had passed in the last two and a half decades that she didn’t wake up singing that line. “I can go twice as high,” Burton joins in. By “take a look, it’s in a book,” nearly everyone in attendance adds to the chorus. It’s a surreal sight placed up against the standard fare of tech press conferences, where bloggers elbow one another to shoot tablets on stands behind bulletproof plexiglass, and before the crowd finishes singing “a Reading Rainbow,” Burton’s eyes aren’t the only misty ones in the house.
Oh, the fickle fate of a Kickstarter darling. Initial hopes and dreams culminate into a single video and a few pages of text on a website that can send your brilliant little idea careening down one of two paths. Path one is the lonely one, falling short of your goal and retreating back to the very literal drawing board to find out just why your idea didn’t match everyone’s ideals.
But the other path has its challenges too. Look at the OUYA Android-powered videogame console. The console was announced on a Tuesday, one week ago today, went on to meet its $950,000 funding goal in roughly eight hours and went on to raise millions. While thousands of gamers pledged their funds, the pundits got to pondering the unlikely (early) success, many predicting doom for this little gaming box that still has a long way to go before its promised release next March.
With the pressure building, OUYA founder and CEO Julie Uhrman is feeling no doubts. She took some time out of her incredibly busy schedule on the one week anniversary of the Kickstarter launch to refute some of the hate that’s been brewing and reassure those who have pledged their $99 that it will ultimately prove to be money well spent.
It’s been said before that RIM CEO Thorsten Heins surely has one of the toughest jobs in tech. It’s a title he no doubt shares with Frank Boulben, the company’s newly minted CMO. After all, it’s Boulben who will be taking charge of the marketing for the company so badly in need of a new image. The Orange / Vodafone expat, naturally, sees very bright things ahead for Research in Motion’s future — a future that hinges almost entirely on the success of the company’s much delayedBlackBerry 10.
Like Heins, Boulben insists that all who have seen the much anticipated mobile operating system thus far have been thoroughly impressed — it’s a sentiment that we certainly can’t debate. Of course, given all of the trouble the company has run into bringing the OS to market, the number of folks who can claim membership in that exclusive club is small indeed. When the first BB10 devices finally hit early next year, Boulben’s team will be tasked with making sure that number increases significantly enough to ensure the company’s success in a field that is increasingly dominated by the likes of Android and iOS.
We spoke to Boulben about his plans to help spread the BlackBerry gospel, the time he spent as an executive at the also-troubled Lightsquared and the changes RIM must make to ensure it’s success in the future.
This past month, SlashGear got the opportunity to speak with the rogues gallery of stars from the biggest comic book sci-fi action film in the theater right this minute: The Amazing Spider-Man. Amongst these actors and actresses were none other than two of the most well-known actors in the business: Martin Sheen and Sally Field. These two play Uncle Ben and Aunt May, the guardians of Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man, and holders of the keys to this young man’s past.
It was a bit of a strange encounter with this pair of acting legends as Sheen entered the room first while Field ended up being a couple of minutes later gracing the room with her presence. As such, Sheen took the opportunity to warm the audience up, standing in front of the room aside the stage he’d soon take to do the talk with Field. He stood next to approximately 12 recording devices that’d been set in front of the chairs that would soon hold him, amongst these the highest tech digital recorders down to tape recorders and over to a couple of smart phones as well…
[Martin Sheen] Now what’s this all about? *laughter*
How many of you have seen the film? The rest of you can leave… How many of you saw the film and loved it? The rest of you can leave… How many of you have the most important question you’ve ever wanted to ask anyone your entire life? The rest of you can leave…
What are all these cell- some people have lost their cellphones en masse here!
Did you all come in for this, or did you fly in? Really? Where did you all come from?
Los Angeles, San Francisco, Idaho, Minnesota – oh Minnesota? Saint Paul? Garrison Keillor is one of my heroes. Clevland? My wife went to highschool there. They closed down the place, she couldn’t go to her reunion. Closed the joint. It was that awful shooting. She grew up on Ukeland. I was over there just last week working for Senator Brown. In Ohio. Good man.
When are they gonna stop picking on the unions over there? What is that about? You know who’s working that crowd, is… what’s that fascist’s name… Karl Rove. You know exactly – when I say fascist, you say Rove! *laughter*
Isn’t it true? Man and they reward that kind of fascism. Give me a break, Wisconsin, Walker, they can keep Walker. Somebody from Wisconsin?
*Field enters the room*
[MS] Ladies and gentlemen, Sally Field. *applause*
Martin Sheen and Sally Field pose for press photos at the NYC junket for The Amazing Spider-Man
[Sally Field] Oh my god it’s, it’s the Marty show.
[MS] I’ve warmed them all up. Those who didn’t like the show have left. They’re an eclectic crew.
[SF] Oh you already know them all? You know where they came from, where they live, how many children they have.
[MS] Sally and I have to make a commission.
[SF] I don’t know where you’re coming from with this…
[MS] Neither of us have seen the movie, so…
[SF] Oh an ADmission, yes. You said commission.
[MS] Oh, it’s show business, they know what I mean. I didn’t get the chance to see it yet, when did you guys see it? Just last night? How was it? I wasn’t invited. But I didn’t get a chance to see it, and I feel badly about that, so I cannot respond specifically to what you saw. – I know I’m in the film, I assume I’m still in it?
[SF] I don’t know, I don’t think they’d be talking to someone who weren’t in the film, you might not be in it very much?
[MS] So if there’s any specific references, you’ll have to refresh my memory, so sorry.
Spider-Man’s first appearance in Amazing Fantasy (1962)
[Q] Have either of you read a comic book or seen a movie with a Spider-Man character?
[SF] Ah no, I didn’t – I read Little Lulu. And I haven’t seen them make that into any thing yet. Little Lulu was mine, that was my girl. So I can sing that song “Little Lulu, Little Lulu” no never mind, I’m not gonna do it. But no, I just, I didn’t – I loved comic books, I was a real comic book freak when I was a kid. Except they were the girl ones. I read Archie, I read those, but my brother read all the Spider-Man.
My brother, who is a world-renowned physicist, he’s one of the finest physicists in the world, he’s almost 3 years older than I – he’s so excited about this movie that I’ve… finally I’ve arrived. I’m in this movie because my brother used to read all of those. So I was and am familiar with the movies but I never have, still, to this day [read the comics.]
Little Lulu, as read by Sally Field
[MS] Yes the same is true for me, I was a big movie fan –
[SF] You read Little Lulu? *laughter*
[MS] Ah no, but I did read Sluggo and Nancy and ah, Archie comics, but my passion for movies was always the, ah, Saturday afternoon, the Zorro or the western or sports or what have you. But no I was, as far as Spider-Man is concerned, specifically? I’m 21 years older than he is, so I missed him, totally. But I do recall the afternoon cartoon, “Spider-Man, Spider-Man, [does whatever a spider can]” and my kids would rush to the TV to see him, but that was as close as I ever got.
Sluggo and Nancy, as read by Martin Sheen – image via MyComicShop
[Q] Mister Sheen, when you’re working on a big budget Hollywood movie, do you miss being out in the jungle with a rebel director going crazy?
[MS] What ever are you referencing? *laughter*
Nah ah, I don’t know how to answer that.
[SF] Just say you don’t remember any of that.
[MS] I don’t remember any of that. You know at my age, at this time in my career, I’m lucky to be living, let alone working. So I give thanks and praise each day that I’m able to get up and walk around. And to still be able to work and to make my living doing the thing I love the most – I’m delighted. So if it’s big budget or small budget, I’m delighted to still be on the team.
[SF] And we’re delighted to have you.
[MS] Well thank you very much.
Martin Sheen on set for Apocalypse Now (1979)
[Q] At this point in both of your careers, how do you feel about putting yourselves on screen in a project for the first time? Do you feel like it’s better to see it in an intimate setting, or especially with a big blockbuster film such as this, do you prefer to see it with a big audience in a theater? And also if you could talk about behind the scenes – did Marc let you see any dailies, and did you want to see dailies?
[SF] I don’t like watching myself at all. I never liked watching myself.
[MS] I like watching you.
[SF] Awww, thank you. But I know a lot of actors, most actors have difficulty watching themselves, but now, as I’ve reached an age, it’s really hard to look at yourself – so I really may not ever see it! I shouldn’t tell you. It’s just a really selfish reason, it’s like ahgh! You know, it’s 3D, for God sakes. I wasn’t good with myself on a television screen.
[SF] So I don’t know, I grapple with it because part of me says, ‘oh Sally, come on, get over it, you want to see Andrew, you want to see Marc’s work,’ and it’s such a small, you know, such a vain little thing that – but that’s true, I admit it, it’s out there.
But also – about watching dailies: Marc didn’t have anyone watching dailies. It’s really not a good idea for actors to watch dailies, it’s an acting faux pas, ever, because the whole task of an actor is to not have any actual mental vision of yourself outside of yourself. Because then you start imitating yourself.
And that is the difficult thing even about watching a film that you’ve done, because you become aware of your own physicality in a way that isn’t good for you to have in your mind. You see actors who start out, young actors who start out and seem so free and easy and natural. Then all of a sudden, third or fourth movie down the line, they look posey, they’re all careful with what they’re doing. Like Marty, for instance. *laughter*
[MS] I was so good until I got successful. *laughter*
[SF] Yeah so sometimes, and Marty will answer this question, I’m sure he feels similar things about watching dailies. I don’t think it’s ever comfortable.
[MS] I agree that it’s a mistake, in this case it was interesting because they would run back a scene almost immediately for technical reasons. You know, you do a take, and they’ll say ‘something was in the frame’ and they’d go down and they’d have just… a row of working computers, these computer geniuses –
[SF] The technology was unbelievable.
[MS] In order to see a playback or a rush, by the way I never saw any of them and I agree with Sally It’s never a good idea for actors to continue to see themselves. The thing is you fall in love with one take, and that’s not the one that’s in the film, and so you’ve already foreclosed any hope of being satisfied.
I once heard an artist say that they did not display their own paintings in their home because they didn’t want to be influenced by themselves. It’s the same thing.
Watching myself on television, for example, I always warned the family what was coming. Like we would gather to watch a “West Wing” episode or some movie of the week, and I’d say, ‘Now this is gonna happen, and you have to feel this way about it.’ *laughter*
I could control the audience when a television came on. With movies, I prefer to go after it had opened, for good or ill, and see it with an audience to get an honest reaction.
[MS] I remember one time I was driving someone up to Bakersfield in the middle of a hot summer day, and on the way back I –
[SF] Why?!
[MS] I had to drop them off!
[SF] Why would you do that?
[MS] Because the bus was late, and, I don’t know.
[SF] Was it someone you’d just met or
[MS] It was someone I knew very well, yes.
[SF] No no, if you’ve just met Marty, I swear to god, if he’d seen some people on the corner and that said ‘I just spent my bus money’ he’d say ‘gosh, where were you going? Look, I’ve got a couple hours, let me drive you!’ *laughter*
I swear!
[MS] Well if I’m going in the same direction. By the way if any of you people are going along PCH… anyway.
At any rate, I was coming back, I was going back to Bakersfield, and I was passing a shopping center, and they had the movies listed. “Major League” was playing. This was about two weeks after it’d – I had never seen it, and so I thought ‘ah this is nice’ and it was so hot. So I went in and it was air conditioned in the theater, and there were two other people besides me. And I watched Major League, which I loved, in the moment where Charlie [Sheen] comes in from the bullpen during the big game, they started playing “Wild Thing”, and I started to weep, and I said, “Go get ’em, kid!” And I wanted to tell the whole audience, all two of them, that that was my son coming in to pitch for the Indians.
So it’s not a good idea, you know, to get so personally involved.
[SF] It’ll cause you to act foolishly in Bakersfield.
[MS] Just – what was the question? *laughter*
[Q] Your characters really ground this story in reality, and I was just wondering about how you were almost in a different movie, like you were doing a family drama while all this action was going on elsewhere.
[MS] I think Sally will confirm that our great director, Marc Webb, wanted us to be as simple and direct and honest with each other and just enjoy each other’s company and not to play any image of the characters, who are very well known. To forget all that and make contact with each other and enjoy what we were doing and make it alive and personal. Because if it’s not personal, it’s impersonal and if it’s impersonal, who cares? We knew those relationships would ground the whole story and that was important.
So that, for my part, that’s all we focused on. And watching this young man — and I know Sally would agree — that this is a very, very special guy, Andrew Garfield, who is now launched and rightly so. But watching him work was so gratifying. He was so generous with us because he had to do some very heavy emotional work and, boy, the set was on fire when he went to those places. But then he would do an equally intense performance off-camera for our reactions. For me that was an enormous leap of generosity to his fellow actors. That really endeared him to me and Sally, too.
But yeah, we took it personal and we had a lot of fun, we were laughing a lot.
Martin Sheen, Sally Field, Andrew Garfield, and Emma Stone pose at NYC junket for The Amazing Spider-Man
[SF] We laughed a lot. And basically all my work in the film – and I don’t know how much of it is actually in the film – I too have not seen it at this point – but it was always with Andrew and Marty, that’s all that I was in the house and around that, I had one scene outside it, I don’t know if it’s still in there.
[SF] So all I knew of the movie, really, was that. We had a table read so certainly knew what was going on, but the interesting thing about we doing this Spider-Man movie is that it is more contemporary, in a sense, in that it’s a metaphor for how hard it is anytime, but especially today, to… the coming of age, you know? And the darkness that this young man carries with him and that troubled soul that he is.
[SF] It certainly is different from any of the ones before, and Mary and I knew our task is that family. That it was a 3D movie was odd because, I said before in an interview, where some of the scene that Andrew and I had together where Uncle Ben was no longer there…
[MS] I’ve gotta see this movie!
[SF] It gets very heated, it’s very troubling what’s going on. As far as we knew, we were shooting a little kitchen drama. And what was bizarre for me, because I’ve been doing this a long time, is that we were shooting a kitchen scene in a very confined atmosphere with a handheld 3D camera. And that means, first of all, that it is enormous, and that it is being held up on a bungee cord by guys up above that are helping. The hand-held camera, notoriously why it was used is so that it can move around with the actors – it’s not on a dolly, it’s not stationary.
[SF] And it moves where we go, if we decide to go this direction or we go that direction, it can go there with you. And you learn as an actor how to, sort of, work with that. But I’d never worked with a 3D camera – first of all the lens is halfway across the room, and it was bizarre… to be doing that. And there was, yes, at least a little part of me going ‘Oh sweet mother of god. This is a 3D camera this far away from my face. I am never going to see this movie as long as I live.’
[SF] It’s kind of amazing, and Andrew and I, to do the fight scenes that he had, to not lose your focus. We were maneuvering around this huge piece of equipment that this phenomenal operator is also trying to, you know, maneuver around us and… the furniture… It was technically fascinating. And in a lot of other ways, as well.
[Q] Mister Sheen, you recently came off of doing voice work for Mass Effect going straight here to The Amazing Spider-Man…
[MS] You, you gotta explain what Mass Effect is, most of em never heard of it.
[Q] Mass Effect is a Science Fiction video game series, ah, and…
[Q] What is it about genre entertainment, about science fiction and fantasy that appeals to you as an actor?
[MS] I’m drawn to characters, you know, if I can relate to them personally, all the better, because for an artist, any artist, if something is not personal it’s impersonal. If it’s impersonal, nobody cares. I’m challenged by playing villains which I think Mass Effect is what I’m playing. I’ve never seen it because I don’t have a computer and I’m not computer savvy. I’m very sorry. I have not seen them. I don’t have a clue what it is.
[SF] What?! What, you don’t have a computer?
[MS] Naw and there was a guy who came to fix my wife’s computer who said that I was the guy in Mass Effect and he was just over the moon. And I said, “I’m doing another one. Would you like to come?” And he ended up as an advisor for it.
[SF] And then he drove him to Bakersfield. *laughter*
Martin Sheen shares a warm moment with Andrew Garfield at the NYC junket for The Amazing Spider-Man
[MS] I’m attracted to things that appeal to me personally, whether its a villain or a hero. In this case, what attracted me to the show was, you know, frankly, was the lady next to me, she was the only one – well, Dennis Leary, I didn’t have any scenes with him but I’ve worked with him before and I’m really fond of him. And Campbell Scott [playing Peter Parker’s father], I knew, these guys, and I was very fond of the lady next to me particularly, so I knew it was going to be a sweet ride.
I got to play a character that I’m a father, I’m a husband, and a grandfather so I have some familiarity with raising kids and grandkids, albeit not always successfully.
Never mind. I’ll take a rap for it.
But I think one of the things that really fascinated me about Spider-Man the character is that he is dealing with what all young people today, particularly in our society, are just absolutely fractured by, and that is peer pressure. And he’s saying, bottom line, is when you hear that voice inside that’s calling you to step up, to be your better self, it’s going to cost you. But that’s the only way you can become free and that’s the only way you can become yourself. But anything worthwhile has got to cost you. If it doesn’t, then you’re left to question its value. So he’s really saying to young people…
Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) throttles a bully (the character Flash Thompson played by Chris Zylka) after he’s gained Spider-Man powers
[SF] I have to say, I agree with you mostly, but I think that it’s not only peer pressure. I really think it’s not only a metaphor for how difficult the world is, I mean, when you look at what’s happening to the world, and he’s using, metaphorically, these villains that come in – in some ways it offers the Peter the possibility to step up and push his own envelope and to, sort of, fight for the right thing. And to threaten your existence in doing it, in other words lose every safe place you ever thought you had to do the right thing.
And, boy oh boy, if the younger generation could have the feeling that we have to step up, and make things right, no matter how much it costs me, it would be a different world. And you see a lot of different countries, you know, lord knows, grappling with this: how do you make change? How do you make enormous change? Well, obviously, it doesn’t come easy.
And in some entertaining way, I think that’s what the metaphor is. It’s a really, really difficult world right now.
[MS] I gotta see this movie.
[SF] It’s playing in Bakersfield!
[Q] I was wondering how the project came to you both, I thought about how Webb was basically a newbie to feature films, but both of you are familiar with new directors or directors who suddenly become really huge. I wonder if that was part of the appeal? And do you seek that out to keep your careers fresh with new talent? New writers, new projects, and new challenges?
[SF] For me, I have one main big reason why I did the movie, but I loved the idea of Marc. I saw his first film which I thought was just exquisite. And I met with him and he is who he is, and I had no doubts he was going to, you know, push his envelope, and I had no doubt that it was going to be exciting, and fresh, because that’s what this film was. So that was never an issue at all, I was very eager to do that, and the cast, and the script was very good. It was dark, and really very different.
But for me the reason that I absolutely had to do it was that my first producing partner was Laura Ziskin and we produced Murphy’s Romance together. It was her first film, and my first film that I produced. She was a good friend. She is, was a spectacular hero. Really a spectacular hero. She is Spider-Man. She really is. I say is because the work that she started is really continuing the fight against cancer. She asked me to do the movie, would I come in and do it, and I said ‘absolutely’ before I read it, before I knew who was involved in it, before I met Marc, before I knew Marty was there. Because my instinct was she wasn’t going to do another one after this, so I would have done it no matter what so I am very proud to have been a part of her first film and her last film. And she was a hero.
Have a peek at the rest of our interviews from the cast and crew of The Amazing Spider-Man in the timeline below, and be sure to stay tuned as more are indeed on the way! We’ve got everyone from Andrew Garfield to Dennis Leary to Emma Stone and back again! We’ve also got Rhys Ivans – playing Curtis Connors, aka the Lizard, coming up soon, the same goes for Sony Pictures Imageworks Senior Visual Effects Supervisor Jerome Chen. Don’t miss it!
Despite all the doom and gloom at RIM of late, CEO Thorsten Heins is a long, long way from throwing in the towel. After denying a “death spiral” and responding directly to Globe & Mail reader questions, he sat down with CIO‘s Al Sacco to talk about what he sees coming next year — and why we’re going to have to wait another couple of months for BB10. The reason for delay, he says, “is not because we added stuff to it. The delay is because our software groups were actually so successful in coding the various feature components… we got overwhelmed by integration efforts.” In other words, the company didn’t add too much stuff, there simply was too much stuff. That’s a very different state of affairs.
That being the state of play, the decision to delay again was a natural one, says Heins. “What I commit to the public out there is that when we ship BlackBerry 10, we will do it at high quality.” And he, of course, has high hopes for what they ship. “In January with the full touch device and the QWERTY coming, I think we will reinstall faith in RIM.” That seems to imply a January release for the device, or at least a final media unveiling, which could make the 2013 CES RIM’s last, best hope.
Most talk of a Nokia Lumia for Verizon has been relegated to small-scale rumors and incidental CDMA references. Nokia’s Worldwide Developer Relations head Richard Kerris has rather suddenly brought the elusive subject into focus through an interview: he tells Neowin that it “won’t be long” before the can-you-hear-me-now network gets a taste of an experience that has previously been limited to the GSM side of the US telecom world, like AT&T and T-Mobile. We’re not getting a roadmap for any Verizon devices just yet, to no one’s surprise, but Kerris is more than willing to share when we can expect the next wave of Nokia devices. We should expect a refresh of the line sometime in the fall, and whatever’s arriving in the spring will purportedly be good enough to have people “climbing over themselves” to get it — just in case Nokia’s role as a Windows Phone 8 partner for the fall launch and beyond wasn’t clear enough. The question-and-answer session touches on a handful of other subjects, including a hint that the near-mythical Windows Phone with PureView may be a bit closer to reality, so click on through if you’d like a peek at where the Lumia is headed next.
With The Amazing Spider-Man in theaters this week, it’s high time you read up on the making of the film and it’s future as spoken by the stars themselves, today’s interview being with none other than Dennis Leary. Playing the role of Peter Parker’s girlfriend Gwen Stacy’s father, Leary lets it be known that he’s not letting go of the series as easily as the classic plot-line surrounding his character would suggest. Note that this interview is especially littered with swearwords and spoilers galore, so if you’re rather young or don’t want to know what happens to Leary’s character in the movie specifically, watch out – otherwise dip in on this rather candid talk with the actor.
Also be sure to check the timeline at the end of this post to see each of the other interviews we collected last month (with more on the way) from the New York City press junket for the film. Don’t miss our first impressions of the movie as well – it’s a blast!
[Dennis Leary] First of all, I have a question. You guys f*ckin bored yet? *laugter*
You just had Sally Field and Martin Sheen up here, I bet you’re really looking forward to me. Two screen legends, and then this a**hole.
I’m sure we can make this very fast.
How about that Martin Sheen. Did he mention his book? I’ll do it for him. He just wrote a book with Emilio. It’s about the father son relationship – A total dysfunctional book book about Emilio wanting to beat the sh*t out of his father on the set of Apocalypse Now. -Which by the way, I don’t know what kind of stuff you like to read, but when he told me about it today and I said, ‘I’m reading that sh*t.’ How great would that be? You know?
[Q] What’s the name of the book?
[DL] Sh*t. I’m sure if you just Google ‘Emilio Esteves punching Martin Sheen’ you’ll get it.
[Q] Hi Dennis, how are you?
[DL] Good, how are you doing?
[Q] Good. I was just wondering – after writing, acting, producing duties on “Rescue Me”, was it nice to be able to come in and do this and just focus on the acting?
[DL] It was awesome. You know that 3D cameras sometimes need to take a break, because they’re air conditioned? They’re big rigs and I just go back to my trailer, watch ‘Sports Center.’ I didn’t have to write anything or fix anything. It was awesome; it was great; it was really good.
Above: The Amazing Spider-Man viral marketing video with Leary as Captain Stacy.
[Q] You played a New York City cop and a New York City fireman, can you tell us, in real life, what experiences you’ve had with either job – how people on the job affect you? And I also wanted to get the inside story on how – you have one of the best lines in the movie with the Godzilla reference – I was wondering if you could tell us how many takes that took, whether or not that was scripted or if it was improvised?
[DL] It was improvised. Marc is like an actor’s director, and he made a small movie, I don’t know if you’ve seen it it’s called 500 Days of Summer. It’s a terrific little movie with a lot of heart. And it’s an actor’s movie – and that’s what he described this as when I first got on the phone with him. And he actually stayed true to that. That he was making a character movie that happened to cost a good jillion dollars and have a big blockbuster name. -And a July 4th release date!
[DL] But it really was like an acting movie. Even in the big action sequences. So in rehearsal and stuff, he was talking about wanting to improvise around certain things and in certain scenes and play with it. That was one of the scenes he had earmarked. And I don’t know what take it was but we filmed a number of different versions of it. It was just myself and Andrew that day with a lot of extras. And we just started playing around with it and somewhere in the middle of it Marc walked up and said ‘what about this?’
Because it feels like, I imagine that we had about 8 or 9 takes where we just played with it and some where my ideas and some where Andrew’s ideas and Marc had come up with that line. And I said, ‘let’s shoot it!’
And I don’t know what they did from there, if they tested all the takes, or if they just decided in the editing room.
[Q] Have you seen the final cut of the movie?
[DL] I haven’t seen the movie.
[Q] What are some of your best real life experiences with real-life New York City cops and New York City fire-fighters?
[DL] Too many to mention with fire-fighters, but, when I was doing a television show called “The Job” for ABC which was based on the real life of a detective, who I knew, who was my technical advisor on The Thomas Crown Affair. So the guy was clean and sober when I was working with him on the television show, but he had been a pill head and kind of a mess – and he had had a mistress while he was married, and he had both things going on which was what the show was about.
And I was standing with Lenny Clark who was an actor in that show, outside of the Steak House after we had just eaten dinner. And the detective, who was on the job, who was under cover, we both see this guy who was scouting stuff out, he had a radio thing and he started to move and he saw us and and he went ‘hey Dennis, thanks a lot, now my wife’s really pissed, she found out about my girlfriend.’ *laughter*
And I thought that summed it up.
[Q] Dennis, I wanted to know what it was like working with Emma Stone –
[DL] Horrible. It was just a nightmare. *laughter*
[Q] It’s apparent you had a really great bond with her and you got to know her so I’m wondering if you could just talk about that.
[DL] We had makeup and hair tests and all that stuff you normally do, but we had some rehearsal time, and ah… listen man, honestly speaking, I had seen her in a couple movies and I’d heard on the grapevine great things about her. And Andrew I’d seen in a couple movies and I knew Rhys’s work, but I didn’t know him – the only person I knew coming in was Martin Sheen, we’d done a movie called Monument Avenue together years ago.
But I really, you know – I thought that Rhys was just a great actor… I didn’t know what to expect from Emma, and quite frankly, they were the real deal. I mean, they were all about the work. They were able to improvise, which not everyone can do – everyone thinks they can but they can’t really do. Every actor thinks they can do comedy and that’s just not f*cking true. *laughter* And everyone thinks that they can improvise and a lot of people can’t!
She’s great at it, and so is Andrew – so the first couple of days was getting used to the idea that these couple of kids were going to steal the movie from me and Rhys. And then, I remember in the dinner scene which was the first big acting scene that we shot and one of the first things we shot on the movie. We had three days to shoot, and we were playing around, improvising and all this stuff, and ah, I still wasn’t there yet.
I was supposed to be intimidating Andrew’s character but it didn’t feel like it was working. Because he was really coming to strike right back at me. And Marc walked in after a take and he just kneeled down next to me and he said ‘hey you really gotta step it up.’ *laughter*
And I just go… ‘f*ck.’ *laughter*
I mean that’s how good they are. I don’t know if you saw Death Of A Salesman but he was really outrageously good and that’s one of the most difficult roles you can take on in the theater and he was just – he was outrageously good, so, they’re the real deal. They’re going to be around for a long time and I’m just saying really nice things about them because I’m going to ride their coattails. *laughter*
That’s what I’m hoping to do. I’m going to be really nice to them, from here on in.
[Q] I have a question about –
[DL] -Where are you?
[Q] Oh, down here.
[DL] Oh, geez. How did you get the microphone? -Oh, she hands it to you, I see. There’s not like a hundred mics! She has a mic, and she has a mic. OK, sorry. I was confused.
[Q] What’s the difference between the effects films you worked on, say, 10 years ago, compared to now? Especially in regards to 3D.
[DL] There’s a huge difference now. Even in the course of “Rescue Me” which we shot for seven years. With a lot of action sequences which involve fire which is famously, obviously, dangerous with real smoke, real flame. And there’s sometimes effects that you need to lay in under that.
We went from having to do everything completely real – fire and smoke, to make it look real – to by the end, in the first five years of the course of that show, finding that there were details that we could do, that we could do digitally, that the audience would never see the difference of. And it would save a lot of safety concerns.
But at the same time there’s a lot of stuff that Marc purposely shot in front of the cameras, to avoid CGI, in terms of the stunt work.
You know, the audience will always know that there’s been a cut, or an edit, or an effect tossed in. I remember the movie “Children of Men”, did you see that movie? There’s a couple of sequences in that movie where it’s clearly one take, and it’s really the actors, and you’re never gonna really get away from that. We all know, we know more than ever when we’re being tricked, so when you’re not being tricked, you’ll stay on the edge of your seat longer.
[Q] How about in regards to 3D? I know that the rigs that are being used are using RED cameras, and then there’s two of them set up in a rig made by 3ality Technica –
[DL] I didn’t know that.
[Q] They make a rig that’s made specifically so that 3D filming is not intrusive. So you’ve got these 3D cameras that are going all over as easy as 2D cameras – did you notice them? Was it difficult to work with them?
[DL] Yeah they’re pretty big, it was pretty difficult not to notice them. But you know, you get used to it after a while.
[Q] Could you talk about – what was your hardest thing to do physically for this movie, and also was it fun to go back to Ice Age with a movie coming out in a few weeks?
[DL] Listen man… those things… Chris Rock said something about them at the Oscars this year. They’re the greatest. You come in, you look like sh*t – I don’t like to dress up, I wear the same clothes every day, you’re lucky I’m wearing – I changed my shirt and my tie like, I basically wear the same sh*t every day and I, you know, I don’t even wear underwear, I’d be in a bathing suit, that’s what I would wear, so.
When you can walk into a room and talk to an electric stick, and pretend to be, I don’t know, some f*cking tiger or something, and they give you all this money for it? That’s the greatest job in show business. It’s an insane job. I love it. I think it’s fantastic, and I’m truly hoping that we do – I want to do Ice Age until we do the Civil War, the Johnson Administration, and Obama gets elected. We’ll have Ice Age 13 when we catch up to the current timeframe and we’re moving into the future. They’re unbelievable man, they’re great.
[Q] What about physical stuff [for Spider-Man]? Do you get scared doing any of that?
[DL] Hey man, that’s what stunt men are for. I’m not one of those actors that’ll walk around saying ‘oh I do all my own stunts’ – f*ck you. First of all there’s a lot of stuff they wont let you do, you know what I mean? Then there’s sh*t you’ll look at and say ‘yeah, I want to do that, that looks pretty cool, let me try that.’ Then there’s stuff where at my age I’m like ‘f*ck this, I’m not doing it.’ F*cking stunt double, man.
[DL] The one thing I wanted, I told Marc, ‘I’m shooting that shotgun, every time the shotgun is fired.’ There was like four days of that, man. And that was a blast. Shooting the shotgun… so I like to do all the shooting. And some of the falls, you know. Sh*t that makes you look cool, I’ll do, but once it gets a little dangerous it’s like; no. That’s where that CGI sh*t comes into play.
[Q] What originally attracted you to this film?
[DL] I’d just finished filming the last season of Rescue Me, we were still cutting and mixing music and making choices. And Marc called me, I got on the phone with him, like I said he described this small little acting movie and I was like ‘this guy’s crazy.’ I’ve done action movies before, nobody, you know, you don’t get to do any acting.
And then I just said, ah, I’ll just jump in. I mean I’m not writing or producing it so how hard is this gonna be? It took longer than I thought but my job was basically just the acting, I didn’t have to do anything else. Which was great. And then just like any film, you figure like, you just hope it comes out in the wash. You know, comes out good. But it was no pressure on me.
I’m not like a comic book guy – my friends that are like Captain Stacy fans I had to like, stop talking to them. Because that’s like, insane, the sh*t that they want you to know about the character and so forth. So I went into work and focused on the other actors and that was it. So I had it easy, on this, you know? It was really no pressure on me.
Now I just gotta make sure I’m in Amazing Spider-Man 2 and 3 and 4 – which, by the way, is not impossible. Flashbacks… I really get in Peter Parker’s head there at the end with the dialog…
I was like ‘guys, you know I can come back, right? You know I can come back in a flashback, I’m in his head.’ And they’re like ‘oh that’s true, yeah man.’
F*ck yeah. By the time we get to The Amazing Spider-Man 5 it might be called “Captain Stacy’s Story.”
[Q] While you said that you’re not really that familiar with the comics, how early on did you know about Captain Stacy’s fate – which was pretty direct from the comics?
[DL] Yeah pretty much from the get-go, yeah.
Captain Stacy as he originally appears in the pages of Spider-Man courtesy of Spider-Man Crawl Space – note his retired status.
[Q] Was that something that made you hesitant or did it make you more excited about the role, getting to be the big act 3 tragedy?
[DL] Well I’ve been around long enough to think ahead. So I’m like, ‘ahh f*ck. My guy dies.’ As an actor I’m like, ‘well I get to do a big juicy death scene.’ But I could be out on the sequels… which is where the real money is.
Because in the original Ice Age, the ape was supposed to die – at the end of the first Ice Age. So I said, ‘this isn’t going to work, you can’t kill a major character, kids bum out.’ Right? So they screened it the first time and kids bummed out. Not because it’s me, because you have to kill the mother at the beginning of the child movie, and it’s OK. But you can’t kill a major character at the end.
So I got in on that! And I had a brief conversation with Marc where I was like ‘how about if I die, and then at the end, I come back to life.’ And he’s like, ‘no you gotta die.’ And I’m like, ‘alright.’ But that’s why I gotta plant the seed for flashback city. Two and 3, you know? Gotta get in there.
[Q] When you were talking about the dinner scene before, and Marc told you to step it up, I was wondering where it went from there, how you stepped it up and intimidated Andrew in that scene?
[DL] Ah, that next take. I kind of saw his, his head move back a little bit. I’ve got it in me, I was just still playing around trying to figure it out, you know? But they’re really good, and they’re not, you know, Andrew and Emma, I don’t know how they’re so good at such a young age, I really don’t.
[DL] Rhys and I would just stand to the side and say, ‘how did these kids get this good this young?’ They’re concerned about all the right things. You know, it’s not the size of the trailer, it’s the meat of the scene. That’s what they’re concerned about, so, you know, hats off to em, man. I wasn’t anywhere near that good when I was their age. Or that mature.
[Q] Did this movie get you thinking about the limits of science, and like, pissing God off by going too far and that kind of thing?
[DL] Yeah, Lapsed Catholic. I not believe there is a god because the Red Sox won the 2004 World Series. *laughter* I also think God is a gangly Irish guy who smokes and drinks and is not the guy that most people believe in. And I flunked science and math in highschool, and I still don’t understand science. So yeah, I don’t really…
I think it could be really cool if you could get bit by a spider and then fly around. I’d f*ckin do that tomorrow. You know? But I don’t investigate that stuff morally. I don’t know anything about science but I can basically recite the entire starting lineup of the 1967 Boston Red Socks – and their batting averages. And why wasn’t that on a math test when I was in school? You know? Like Bobby Doerr‘s stats, I could have been a straight-A math student if that had was on the math test. But no!
[Q] People don’t know that you’re a doctor.
[DL] They should know that because I published a book under the name Doctor, two books under the name Doctor actually.
[Q] A lot of people don’t realize this.
[DL] Yes I am, in fact. It’s nice that it follows the science question. Just incase you didn’t know – but you probably did know because of the celebrity world of becoming a doctor, which is you don’t actually have to go back to school. You’re just famous and they give you one if you speak at the graduation – which I used to think was really bullsh*t, but now that I have a doctorate, I think it’s a really smart system. *laughter*
I actually graduated with honors from my college, it was an acting and a writing degree, and then years later they gave me a Doctor of the Fine Arts. So there you go, Bill Cosby.
Bill Cosby actually went back to school and got his real doctorate, I’m like, ‘f*ck man, he must be pissed.’ I’m Doctor Dennis Leary, he’s Doctor Cosby. You know what I mean? But it’s cool to be able to say Doctor Leary.
I just went to – my son just graduated from the school I went to, and the guy looked down his nose at me because they were putting the doctors, the doctorates in a special seating area. And we were going in there, and this guy, like a real academic looking, like real doctor, of letters, turned around and he’s like, “excuse me but this is for the doctors.” And I’m like, “yeah I’m Doctor Dennis Leary.”
And he went like this, *surprised look* like that, and then there I was sitting next to him at the graduation. With all the other f*ckin doctors. *laughter* He was pissed, man, he was not happy.
[Q] Where is this school located?
[DL] In Boston, it’s a great college. Emerson College. I went there, there’s a lot of famous people that went to school there. It’s a fantastic school for acting, writing, and now filmmaking as well. My son just graduated with a degree in filmmaking. I can’t say enough about that school. It’s where I ultimately met my wife, after I graduated, she was going to school there, and… a lot of great alumni from that school from Henry Winkler to Norman Lear back in the way old days to – you know, a lot of the Simpsons original staff writers came out of that college. David Cross, me, god – the list, Gina Gershon, Mario Cantone, ah… I’m forgetting people man, Laura Keitlinger, it’s just, it’s – Steven Wright, the comedian.
It’s a really great school.
I should be getting paid for this.
Be sure to stay tuned for our whole series of interviews being posted immediately if not soon for this fabulous film. Have a peek at the timeline below to see what we’ve already got and hit our Entertainment hub for more awesome interview and film feature action in the future. Also don’t forget to see The Amazing Spider-Man in theaters now!
That’s New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, speaking candidly during a recent interview at D10 in California. The topic of conversation? Widespread WiFi, and whether or not the government should be the one thinking about its future ubiquity. More specifically, if WiFi hotspots should be treated like “roads or water supply,” as aptly stated by AllThingsD‘s Kara Swisher.
This obviously isn’t the first time such an idea has crossed the minds of those connected to Washington, D.C. Muni-Fi (municipal wireless networks) projects were all the rage a few years back, but one spectacular failure after another swiftly extinguished that momentum. In more modern times, America (as well as other nations) has sought to solve the “rural broadband” problem, bringing high(er)-speed internet connections to places with a higher bovine population than human.
But bringing broadband to places like rural North Dakota seems like an easy chore to a small, but passionate, group of 60,000 sitting some 4,770 miles from San Diego, California. American Samoa may be an unincorporated US territory located closer to pure bliss than the hustle and bustle of Wall Street, but it’s no doubt being taken into consideration in recent mapping projects aiming to pinpoint the areas most lacking in terms of digital infrastructure. Unbeknownst to most mainlanders, this fragile island chain is home to the most expensive internet in America, and the political issues surrounding it are astonishing. Head on past the break to learn more on what I discovered.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
