TwilightMania

“Surreal” is a word that perfectly suits Robert Pattinson’s life at the moment.

Not only is the up-and-comer adjusting to a new, hyper-famous life after Twilight’s rabid fan base sank their teeth into his brooding portrayal of the undead romantic hero Edward Cullen (and became as addicted to the newly minted star as the saga’s vampire clan is to hemoglobin), he’s also playing the famed Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dalí in his latest film. Little Ashes chronicles Dalí’s formative years at university, where he became embroiled in a complex, obsessive and sexually charged relationship with future poet Federico García Lorca.

Pattinson paints Fandango a portrait of how he climbed into Dalí’s surreality, bares a bit of fang on fame, stays in the shadows during frenzied fan encounters and even offers a nibble of New Moon scoop.

Fandango: There was the showy, intentionally bizarre public Dalí and then there is his art, which should be taken very seriously. Have you thought about that as it applies to your own work?
Pattinson: Yeah. He had a fanatical control over how he was perceived. But now it’s really out of control – out of your control. Your public image just seems to be in the hands of faceless strangers. You see these stories come up all the time and you’re like, “Jesus. How do you know…?”

Fandango: Is it harder playing a real person, as opposed to playing the fictional Edward Cullen who had his story laid out in black and white?
Pattinson: I think in a lot of ways it’s kind of the same. You’re still playing fiction even though you’re playing a real character. It’s the same kind of approximation of somebody. The only thing that you can take from the book is the general outline, the mood changes, the emotional changes and development. I’m not playing it exactly as it is in the book.

Fandango: Dalí was a famed surrealist and no doubt you’ve had your share of surreal experiences in the last few months – like fans screaming over cardboard cutouts of you at the video store.
Pattinson: I know! I was in a Blockbuster on the day it was being released. I had forgotten it was being released that day. There were two families who had come with eight- or nine-year old-daughters to get their DVD. They were standing in the line crying and I stood watching what all this commotion was about. They didn’t know I was there or anything. I was just thinking “Wow, you’re crying about a DVD.” It’s fascinating.

Fandango: And you never revealed yourself to them?
Pattinson: No way! [laughs]

Fandango: Do you and your castmates try to top each other with the wild post-fame encounters you’ve had?
Pattinson: In a lot of ways they are all quite similar. The funny thing is that I’m always going around trying to look as inconspicuous as possible I find that people are always really disappointed when they actually recognize me. They are like ‘”Oh! At first I thought you were a bum but then I realized who you were.”

Fandango: You’re just getting started shooting New Moon. How are things going?
Pattinson: The interesting thing about this one is that so much of my character is in Bella’s head. It’s based on a mixture of memories and nightmares. Bella thinks she is going mad. I get to do some really creepy stuff. In other words, Bella is really frightened of [her hallucinations]. It’s really, really different than Twilight. I think that a lot of people will be kind of scared by this one. I wanted to try and put that into Twilight but I couldn’t really find a way to make Edward scary.

Fandango: How is working with the new director, Chris Weitz?
Pattinson: He’s a great guy. He’s very, very talented, and articulate. I guess it must be kind of stressful for him to take this on. It’s got so much expectation. He just seems very calm about everything.

Fandango: What was it like attending the Academy Awards for the first time?
Pattinson: I got there and then I’m sitting in the second row. It was unbelievable. I keep thinking that something terrible is going to happen. “Death” is the only thing I’m thinking the whole time. I just used up all my luck so I’m probably going to die at 23 or something.

Fandango: Did you discover that any of the hugely famous stars that were there were actually fans of Twilight, or their kids love the movie?
Pattinson: Robin Wright Penn came up to me. I thought that was kind of amazing after her husband had just won Best Actor. That was very, very surreal.

Fandango: You contributed a couple of songs to the Twilight soundtrack. Are you still pursuing music, and will you be doing more for New Moon?
Pattinson: I’m in talks to do a soundtrack for another movie, composing. I cannot say what it is yet, but I really, really, really want to do it. I don’t think I’m going to have anything on New Moon, but never say never.

Fandango: And next you might be doing Memoirs, which has been described as a story of two star-crossed lovers trying to overcome family tragedies.
Pattinson: That will hopefully happen. It’s not finalized yet. It’s a great script and it’s something different from anything I’ve done before. I was in New York working on rewrites the other day with Jenny [Lumet, screenwriter of Rachel Getting Married]. It seemed like it’s going to be really, really, really good.

Fandango: Finally, for many people, Dalí became known as the artist with the crazy mustache and today you’re the actor with the wild hair. Did you recognize the parallel in the hirsute trademarks?
Pattinson: [laughs] I didn’t think about that, but it’s funny because people are still bringing up my hair, even though I cut it off to make it different. That is quite funny. God. I hope that I don’t get known for that for the rest of my life.

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‘Twilight’ star Cam Gigandet and his girlfriend, Dominique Geisendorff welcomed a baby daughter on April 14. Both of Cam’s parents and his sister were there for the birth. (That’s so sweet!) The baby weighed in at 7 lbs, 6 oz.

And now Cam and Dominique have settled on a name: Everleigh Ray Gigandet.

I like it: what do you think of the latest celeb baby name? 

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Twilight vampire laughs off Robert Pattinson autograph request: Cameron Bright prepares for New Moon fame

I didn’t realize I’d be doing an interview with a vampire the next time I caught up with Cameron Bright.

Bright, 16, hasn’t even started filming his scenes as Alec — part of the Volturi vampire clan and twin brother of Jane (Dakota Fanning) in the Twilight sequel New Moon — yet he has been affected by Twilight mania since the day he was cast.

“It’s going to be kind of weird,” admits the Nanaimo, B.C., actor who confesses he had to be dragged to see Twilight, the first in a series of movies based on Stephenie Meyer’s popular romantic teenage vampire novels.

“All the guys were saying, ‘It’s a chick movie,’ but it was really good,” Bright recalls. “I’m glad to be a part of it.”

No sooner had news reports surfaced about Bright joining the New Moon cast headlined by Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, Taylor Lautner and Michael Sheen, than he began getting text messages from his friends.

“Even if you’re in it for five minutes, you’re huge,” says the Victoria-born actor who made his debut in a Telus commercial. “You’re revered.”

Not surprisingly, he has also been getting more attention from female friends.

“I say ‘no’ right away, because when they walk up to me, I can sense what they’re going to say,” he says, laughing. “Can you get me Robert Pattinson’s autograph?’ ”

Bright, who hadn’t read the books, says it was easy finding a Twilight fan to help him research his role.

“I said, ‘I’m going to play Alec. Do you know him? Yeah? Sweeeet! Thanks, ya did the job for me.’ ”

While he hasn’t worked with Fanning, he met her at the Critic’s Choice Awards in Los Angeles two years ago.

“She didn’t know who I was, so when I introduce myself and go, ‘Hey, do you remember me?’ she’ll probably say no,” he says, adding he should get to know her quickly on the Vancouver set. “In our first scene, I get to kiss her on the cheek.”

Since his scenes are interiors, he won’t be joining her when exterior Volturi sequences are shot in Tuscany, Italy, however.

Standing 5-10, with longish hair and the demeanour, vocal inflections and lingo of a typical texting teenager, Bright seems worlds away from his younger self, the cherubic youngster known for playing spooky children.

He savours his memories of getting to work with Hollywood royalty in his first two major movies. He played Adam, the sinister clone of a distraught couple’s dead son, opposite Robert De Niro in Godsend; and Sean, a solemn 10-year-old boy claiming to be the reincarnation of the late husband of a fragile New York widow played by Nicole Kidman in Birth. He even managed to survive a media firestorm that erupted at the Venice Film Festival over a controversial scene, in which he removes his clothes and climbs into a bathtub with the Aussie actress before they kiss.

Among other roles, Bright has also played a sadistic misfit in The Butterfly Effect; an abused boy who murders his stepdad in Running Scared; the son of Aaron Eckhart’s Big Tobacco lobbyist in Thank You for Smoking; maternal mutant babe Milla Jovovich’s gifted charge in Ultraviolet; and a mutant child in X-Men: The Last Stand.

He can also be seen in two DVD movies:He plays the teenage son of a derelict building’s disturbed caretaker (Deborah Kara Unger) in the horror film Walled In; and a 13-year-old obsessed with a bombshell (Gretchen Mol), who’s romantically linked to John F. Kennedy, in the upcoming An American Affair, a thriller/coming-of-age flick set in the early 1960s.

The talkative teen says he has grown accustomed to his fame, and laughingly shrugs off the antics of some overzealous fans, such as one who impersonates him on MySpace.

“I think it’s a riot,” says Bright, who has even playfully posed as a fan himself and interacted with the impostor.

“I go ‘Hey, how’s it going? Must be cool being in all those movies.’ ”

He isn’t complaining, though, realizing it’s all part of the acting career he signed up for.

“My fans make me, and if I didn’t respect them, I wouldn’t be here,” says Bright, not yet targeted by the tabloids.

“I’m too lovable,” he quips, adding “my friend Bob De Niro” has shown him you can be famous and still avoid the tabloid glare. “You never really hear about Bob unless he’s doing something good, like his Tribeca festival. He’s not being derided.”

Still, he’s ready for what the future might bring, especially since Alec’s profile increases in the third and fourth books.

“Does Cameron realize how big he’s going to be?” a neighbour asked Anne, who’s happy her son will be seen in a family movie.

If his profile does rises ridiculously, the actor has a plan to deal with it.

“If I see a girl wearing a T-shirt with my face on it, I’m turning around and walking the other way,” he says, laughing. “I would not be able to keep a straight face. I’ll run out of the mall.”

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Peter Facinelli jokingly tells Access Hollywood’s reporter that he is scared by the muscular body of “New Moon” co-star Taylor Lautner

“He scares me now!” Peter Facinelli told Access Hollywood about his “Twilight” co-star Taylor Lautner who has been bulking up in a bid to reprise his role as Jacob Black in “The Twilight Saga’s New Moon.” “He’s gotten really big and if I saw him in a back alley, I’d probably run!” he jokingly added.

Peter, moreover, also commented on the other vampire cast of the highly anticipated movie. “Werewolves are coming out of the woodwork. They scare me!” he gushed on the red carpet of the “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past” Los Angeles premiere on Monday night, April 27.

Speaking about fans of “New Moon”, Peter told Access Hollywood, “The fans have been phenomenal, we have fans who just camp out all night long … with sleeping bags! It’s crazy!”

Peter Facinelli played Carlisle Cullen in “Twilight” and will reprise the role in “The Twilight Saga’s New Moon,” which is due to be released in U.S. theaters on November 20 later this year. He can next be seen starring in “Nurse Jackie”, which is a dramedy TV series debuting in June.

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Hey Everyone! Sorry I’ve been so slow about posting lately. I’ve been out of town looking at colleges for my daughter. She will be going to film school!

I’ll try to get caught up on everything in the next day or two. Thanks for sticking around. 

If you have a pet, check back soon. We will be announcing something fun on the site real soon.

Also, I will be going to London in October. It’s for a Joss Whedon convention (Hallowhedon), so if any of you are into the Buffy/Angel/Dollhouse scene, I’ll be posting updates live from the convention on my Buffy site that is currently under construction (RebuildSunnydale.com) when the time comes. I can’t wait! I’ve never been to London!

Will Twilight and New Moon spawn designer vampire knock-offs? It’s not a question of “will,” it’s a matter of “when.” With Twilight mania raging worldwide and the upcoming sequel New Moon not even wrapped up filming yet in Vancouver, new life has been injected into vampire fiction as new novels are cropping up by the week to jump on the Twilight bandwagon. The time that we’re likely to see an explosion of Twilight wannabes is the gap between New Moon and the third Twilight Saga film, Eclipse, so don’t say I didn’t warn you.

This is in no way a negative inference on fiction literature at large since it exists to entertain and sweep you into worlds far away in the mind, but the drama of the vampire legend is nothing new or inventive. Keep in mind, even Blade made its way back as a short lived TV series over the past couple of years with shows like True Blood popping up as well. Vampires have always intrigued us bloodthirsty humans. From books to film to television and back to novels, throughout the years new vampire worlds have revamped the concept of the traditional stake-in-the-heart type vampire to incorporate more current themes, opinion, values, social trends, and personal author thoughts in a wide open information age that has had an impact on how stories are conceived. And with each new vampire world comes even more sub-vampire copycats.

What Twilight does well is that it gives fans a fresh and appealing battle of the species – werewolves and vampires (Ouellette and Cullen) – to serve as the richer entry point into the love we can’t have and the deeper, more explicit love we should wait for. It really means that we’re all vampires and werewolves just like Edward and Jacob Black when it comes to love and relationships. In the coming Twilight years, we’re likely to see a lot of tier-two vampires pitted against like a Godzilla movie. If it makes money vampires films could possibly go the way of the wave of Asian horror remakes, It’s always, “Too much of a good thing…”

However, as we’ve seen with the Stephenie Meyer based Twilight Saga and the upcoming Twilight sequel New Moon, the new generation of literary vampire fiction is appealing to many on a global scale. And without that ongoing, centuries old desire to create the perfect vampire, much of the genre wouldn’t exist. But how much of the genre will be affected by the Twilight Saga when it’s all said and done years from now?

Fiction franchises like House of Night, Den of Shadows, and the Vampire Academy have lured legions of loyal fans, especially young adults who relate most to the recipe of fantasy and real and relatable teen issues. As successful as each series has been, now amid the popularity of Twilight, New Moon and its stars Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, and Taylor Lautner, you can easily make the argument that these books are simply capitalizing on the previous success of other novels. If it weren’t for one, there wouldn’t be another. It’s a cycle that has existed throughout the centuries of literature, fuelled by money and profit off of something that’s already proven itself lucrative. None of this is new, of course. In the movie world prior to Twilight and New Moon, we went from Lord of the Rings to Harry Potter to Asian Remake, all with a slew of similar stories and concepts that clogged up the theatres until the last dollar was coughed up. Comic book geeks, sorry to say, you’re next.

Why is the Twilight series so popular? After reading both Twilight and New Moon, it is easy to feel the appeal. The conflict of teenage angst coupled with a fantastical character like Edward Cullen who feels like the dark horse of a heroic interpretation, a would-be hero that is handsome but still flawed has enchanted millions of worldwide fans. Since the film adaptations have already proven to be windfall lucrative, Twilight and New Moon stars Robert Pattison, Kristin Stewart and Taylor Lautner have all become household names. In Vancouver, fans have hit the likes of Twitter to location scout, staked out hotels and streets, and even attempted to track down the stars as they sit down to eat in restaurants around town. With three more Twilight Saga films yet to be released, at this point there are no signs that the Twilight train will be slowing down any time soon.

Now that the Twilight Saga has garnered so much worldwide attention in the production stages, a question of the Twilight ripple-effect comes to mind. How many similarly themed novels, movies, and TV shows will we see because of Twilight and New Moon? How many are already being written, in production, or now wrapped or in post-production? There’s one that we know of for certain.

Since Twilight Saga author Stephenie Meyer already has four Twilight novels behind her, with a fifth hopefully on the way in Midnight Sun, it’s not like Forks (ie: Rome) was built in a day. It takes an incredible amount of patience and diligence to create a rich cast of characters, let alone a world in which fantastical rules are created and romantic perimeters are set. Add the element of relatable and classic dramatic conflict of forbidden love and the mind is free to wander. There’s no doubt that we’ll see Twilight knock-offs but will any be able capture the same type of magic that so many people have already responded to on so many levels? If the other vampire films or books are rushed for the sake of riding the Twilight wave, they’ll stand out like a sore vampire thumb and become overexposed. It’s those rush-job vampire that’ll send the real literary or cinematic vampires into their coffins for another 10 years.

What’s also interesting is that shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer are still living on with huge literary followings despite the fact that the show ended in 2003. Will the world be able to handle 50 more Edward Cullen type characters? Well, sure. But down the not-too-distant road, it’s not like we’re going to have a choice. Is there anything we can do to stop the impending vampire tidal wave? Not a chance. Remember, though, if you own a fake Louis Vuitton handbag, it’s not a Louis Vuitton handbag.

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