| Exclusive: JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE & AMANDA SEYFRIED discuss 'IN TIME'. |
| Written by SUPPLIED - Robert Nunez. | ||||
| Sunday, 30 October 2011 16:33 | ||||
Stars JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE and AMANDA SEYFRIED and director Andrew Niccol talk about their eagerly anticipated new film, the futuristic action thriller 'IN TIME'. These days it’s an essential rite of passage for any fast-rising movie star to put in an appearance at Comic-Con, the San Diego-based festival of all things sci-fi and fantasy and an important showcase for some of Hollywood’s most eagerly awaited new films. After the success of “The Social Network,” “Bad Teacher” and “Friends with Benefits,” actor and musician Justin Timberlake is clearly on a box-office roll but says that his first time at Comic-Con this past summer, as part of panel presenting footage from his new film “In Time,” was one of the high points of an incredibly busy year. “We’ve all got some geek in us, so Comic-Con was very exciting for me,” Timberlake says, adding with a laugh that he’s just glad that his first film at the annual event wasn’t something that involved him wearing tights. “Apart from the whole question of what I’d look like in tights,” Timberlake explains, “there’d be a lot of pressure if I was coming here to talk about a character that already exists and people had a certain idea of how that character should look.” As it turned out, Timberlake had nothing to worry about with the futuristic action thriller “In Time.” Comic-Con’s famously discriminating audience gave a very enthusiastic welcome to some high-octane advance footage from the film and fans buzzed with excitement when Timberlake appeared at several panels alongside co-star Amanda Seyfried and director Andrew Niccol to talk about the making of the movie. “In Time” is set in a not-too-distant future when scientists have created a world where people stop aging at 25. The bad news though is that rather than being immortal everyone is genetically engineered with a body clock that gives them just one more year to live. Unless, that is, they can earn, buy, cheat or steal their way to some extra time.
Timberlake plays the seriously down-on-his-luck Will Salas, who wakes up one morning to discover he’s been falsely accused of murder and has just 23 hours left to live. With the help of a beautiful hostage, played by “Mamma Mia!” and “Red Riding Hood” star Amanda Seyfried, Will must literally race against time to prove his innocence and survive another day. At Comic-Con at least, no one involved with the film gave much more away about the plot than that, but we think we’re safe in predicting that Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried will be throwing off a few romantic sparks on screen. Says a gallant Timberlake, “I have a clause in my contract that specifies that if you put someone as beautiful as Amanda in the movie, then I have to fall in love with her.” “In Time” is written and directed by New Zealand-born Andrew Niccol, whose previous credits include the screenplay for “The Truman Show” and “Gattaca” (which like “In Time” he both wrote and directed). “Gattaca” was ahead of the cinematic curve in its creative use of CGI effects and in envisaging a future world where genetics have become a tool of social engineering. “The Truman Show,” meanwhile, was uncannily prescient about the voyeuristic reality programming that has changed the face of television over the last decade. Not surprisingly then, there’s seemingly a lot more to “In Time” than guns and car chases, even if Niccol insists that the film is first and foremost an action thriller with “a ticking clock in every scene.” “But, yes, it was definitely the theme of immortality, the desire to live forever, that sparked my interest,” the director concedes, adding with a smile that it’s no coincidence that “In Time” was shot in Los Angeles. “Los Angeles is the capital of staying young forever,” he explains. “At the center of the story,” Niccol adds, “is this idea that in the future everyone is engineered to have a body clock that counts down the time they have left. And this invention is the death of all other inventions. We like to say in the movie that the poor die and the rich don’t live. The poor have no time to create anything new, so there are no new cars, no new technology, and the rich have no incentive. Why invent a new car when you could do it a hundred years from now? So I think the film does comment a little bit on our seeming desire to stay young forever and what it would mean if we could do that, because there’s a possibility that even if we could switch off the aging gene and live forever, our psychology may not be able to keep up with our biology. Maybe we would all get to a certain point when we would actually want to die even if we didn’t have to.”
On the practical side, a world in which no one ages physically beyond 25 presented the director with some real challenges when he cast his film, which also stars Olivia Wilde, Cillian Murphy, Vincent Kartheiser, Alex Pettyfer and Matt Bomer. “It was interesting in that I was looking for new souls and old souls,” Niccol says, “because although everyone in the film has to look around 25 years old, chronologically the characters are anywhere from 25 to 105 years old. I had to find actors who could convince you that they’re very old inside but still young on the surface.” Niccol says he got exactly the cast he wanted though the result is an instant bit of “In Time” trivia with which to impress your friends: namely that the real-life Justin Timberlake is three years older than Olivia Wilde, the actress who plays his on-screen mother. Amanda Seyfried, meanwhile, who clocks in at a spot-on 25 (inside and out), says that “In Time” was one of the best scripts she has ever read. “It’s a completely original idea,” the actress explains, “and such an amazing and intense concept – this thought that we may one day be able to switch off the gene for aging – but Andrew makes it seem entirely plausible and the characters feel completely real. I think there are very few writers who can do that: write a script with this extraordinary premise and create an imagined world that you absolutely believe in.” Justin Timberlake says it was a similar response to Niccol’s script that made him eager to jump on board. “When I first read the script I just got totally caught up in the characters and the story. Will is basically an anti-hero, an ordinary guy who’s forced to become a hero and take on these incredible challenges, and that aspect of it really appealed to me: I wanted him to come from a real place and be street smart but not to have extraordinary abilities. “What I also loved about the script is that Andrew has a fantastic ability to write these intelligent, thoughtful scripts that make us hold up a mirror to ourselves. According to the film, the society of the future has been split into two halves: the very rich, who can live forever, and the poor, who die every day. And that’s definitely a reflection of where things might be headed. “Just to continue to embarrass Andrew,” Timberlake adds, “what completes the package is his ability to take this smart subject matter and create a huge, non-stop thrill ride out of it. The film might be thought-provoking and give you something to talk about after you leave the cinema, but while you are watching it, the movie stays a couple of steps ahead of you the whole time and doesn’t really give you a chance to catch your breath.
“I mean, I run a lot in this movie,” Timberlake says with a laugh. In fact, Timberlake ran so much during the filming of “In Time,” that at one point during the shoot he ended up on crutches. Not that he seems to have minded much. “This is my first real lead in a movie,” says the budding screen star, “and it was definitely both physically and mentally demanding, but it was very exciting and I loved the physicality of the performance. “I’m from Tennessee and it’s no secret we like to shoot guns,” Timberlake grins. “It’s also fun to drive cars really fast and not get arrested for it.” Timberlake’s on-screen partner in crime, Amanda Seyfried, had challenges of her own: namely the high heels she’s wearing in nearly every scene of the film. “We seem to be running for our lives the whole movie,” the actress says, “it’s like you never stop the action, and it’s painful to do that in heels! I did like shooting the guns though. Justin and I enjoyed it so much we sometimes went to the shooting range after hours.” Whether he’ll ever be back at Comic-Con playing a superhero – and Timberlake says that playing a comic book character would probably be “too scary” – for now he is definitely happy to have made his debut there with “In Time.” “When I was a kid,” Timberlake says, “my favorite movies were “First Blood,” “Die Hard” and “The Fugitive.” They were stories about ordinary men put into extraordinary situations and what drew me in was seeing how these guys would handle things. The effects were great, the car chases were great, but it was the characters who had me hooked and kept me on the edge of the seat. With any luck, people are going to feel the same about “In Time.”” 'IN TIME' is out in NZ cinemas now! Check out the trailer below... |
