Tag Archive for 'TODAY EXCLUSIVE'

Heya Film Fans,

So as you guys already know, I had a chance to chat with good ole Ted Mosby via phone, exclusively, following a face to face interview when he popped by Singers to promote his new movie Happythankyoumoreplease, which was showing at the 24th SIFF. SQUEAL!

So finally, here’s my video interview:
As they say, better late than never…

Here’s my picture with him:

And here is my article that was previously published in the newspaper:

Happythankyoumoreplease may be the title of writer-director-actor Josh Radnor’s bittersweet coming-of-age directorial film debut, but it also perfectly sums up how much love audiences have been giving the guy who plays Ted Mosby from the hit TV series How I Met Your Mother.

After all, the indie flick about a group of 20-somethings who are learning to navigate life and love in New York City won the coveted 26th Sundance Film Festival’s Audience Award last year and garnered a Grand Jury Prize nomination – a harbinger of future commercial success.

But as the affable 37-year-old told Today over the phone from Los Angeles, he wasn’t even thinking about awards because just getting into Sundance was “a great victory”.

“I got a few days out of work (to attend the festival), and I came back to work and plunged right back to taping (Season 7 of How I Met Your Mother),” he recalled. “And then I got a call from the Sundance film people saying I’ve got to go back there … so I had about an hour to get to the airport and flew back.

“My first thought was, ‘I hope I don’t forget the names of people I worked with’ – which, of course, I did!” he laughed. “But then I called them immediately afterwards. But, really, it was really thrilling and great validation for everyone who worked on the film. And I felt that we made something that would appeal to audiences, and it seems that that was what happened.”

The TV star stated that he wanted to write a great part for himself to play in a film, but Radnor revealed that he initially didn’t intend to direct Happythankyoumoreplease.

“Thanks to my producer and my agent, it got very clear that I should be doing it, and I’m very glad they did. I always wanted to write and direct my own movie, and I’ve been writing for a long time. But it just happened a lot quicker than I thought it would.”

And the multi-tasker wasted no time getting down to work, shooting the hit TV show, as well as writing, directing and acting in a film at the same time.

“Having no social life and no children … that really helps,” he quipped, adding that time management wasn’t a problem. “I think the hardest thing was swatting away all the voices in your head that told you that you were going to fail.

“You have those demon voices that pop up saying things like ‘You’re a fraud. You’re never going to pull it off.’ Just the voices of doubt which really had to be tamed,” he shared.

“Once I really started doing it, and once I got my team together and realised I had great people around me … I really calmed down. I was a fairly non-neurotic director on set.”

It was a marked difference from directing his second movie, the recently wrapped Liberal Arts, which stars Elizabeth Olsen. “I was acting in about 90 per cent of the movie, so that was actually a more challenging experience than the first one!”

But is Radnor getting a wee bit tired of doing television?

“I’m really blessed with this amazing job, but, you know, it’s a really limited set of things you’re called upon to do on TV,” he said. “(It’s like) you go to the gym every day but you only get to work out your right arm. And your right arm is incredibly sculpted.

“I think all of us on the show are doing all these other things, including raising kids, and that pushed different buttons in ourselves and flexed these different muscles that, by its very nature, television is never going to fulfil all of them.”

But fans can take heart that Ted Mosby will be around for some time – well, at least for two more years.

“Eight seasons is a great run, and we still enjoy doing it! I feel like we’re still in the zone with it. No one’s grown tired of it and the show doesn’t feel stale at all! I guess we will keep at it for two more years and then we will see,” he said.

And even then Radnor said he isn’t opposed to bringing his Mother cast mates together for a film.

“I’d love to work with the cast down the line. But the problem is that you put people from the show in a room together and say that they are different from their TV characters … it might be hard. So maybe give it a few years, and we will gather together and see what we can do.”

So how excited is he about being part of the Singapore International Film Festival, and what does he hope Singaporean audiences will get from the film?

“It’s been a really amazing ride having directed this film and having it take me, starting in Sundance, all over the world, and now Singapore! It’s a great way to see the world, meet different people and you also get to meet a lot of film-makers at these festivals, which has been great. And you end up being part of this very interesting, engaged community …

“They say the more specific something is, the more universal it becomes. That is what the movie feels like to me; and I think there is nothing an audience of New Yorkers would get that Singaporeans won’t get.”

XOXO,
G