I really feel that I’ve done the best interviews of my career this year, and after 14 years in the business, I have a significant point of comparison.
Crave asked me to write about my 10 best interviews of the year — and it was no small task to narrow them down. I had to throw in a few honorable mentions just to make myself feel better about acknowledging talks with film legends as well as some long awaited “gets” — or just some plain badass interviews. Even then, I couldn’t narrow it down to 10, but a dozen is still pretty good, so if you haven’t read these interviews, here’s a reason to revisit them. Or, if you read all my interviews this year and didn’t catch what was so special about these, read ‘em again!
Fred Topel's Top 12 CraveOnline Interviews of 2013
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12. James O’Barr and F. Javier Gutierrez
CraveOnline was one of only three outlets granted an interview with the creator of The Crow comic book and the director of the upcoming re-imagining starring Luke Evans -- but I’m sure I was the one to whom it meant the most. The Crow was important to me both as a movie and as a way to grieve Brandon Lee, so meeting O’Barr was already significant, on top of hashing out whatever questions and feelings I had about making another movie. I look forward to following the production as it moves forward.
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11. Stephenie Meyer
Between my interview at Sundance for Austenland and my interview for The Host, I feel I’ve now done the definitive Stephenie Meyer interview. I may not be the biggest fan of her work, but this is an author who’s been a major influence on an entire generation, so I take it as a significant responsibility to document her.
Sitting at tea in Park City was lovely and even back home in Los Angeles, I think I really figured out where she’s writing from -- and I love the idea for the action movie version of Twilight.
Photo by Vera Anderson/WireImage
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10. Kirby Bliss Blanton
This was a real case of film festival magic. I saw The Green Inferno at the premiere midnight screening at the Toronto International Film Festival Midnight Madness section.
Being social media savvy, Eli Roth retweeted my review, and since I singled out Blanton in the cast, she responded on Twitter. We started tweeting and it led to a sit down lunch interview. That’s new world journalism.
Photo by Michael Bezjian/WireImage
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9. Nicolas Cage
I’d have to say any opportunity to talk to Nicolas Cage would make my yearly top 10. He’s my favorite actor and when I went to TIFF this year, I was most excited to see his latest work, Joe.
I spent the whole week of the festival negotiating to speak with Cage, but festival magic came through again. It surpassed my expectations as Cage assured me he was still every bit as mystical when he plays more realistic roles like Joe, and he even offered to talk about Vampire’s Kiss, his most outrageous performance, one day.
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8. Portia De Rossi
The return of “Arrested Development” was maybe the biggest story in television this year. I actually pulled a couple favors, one with Netflix and one with De Rossi’s personal rep, to land one of the most prominent cast members. When we spoke, we really connected over “Arrested” schtick, and especially over her awesome hairdo, which was more relevant to the series than I could even imagine!
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7. Renny Harlin
This was a long time coming for me. I had a very personal Renny Harlin story, as one of my first Hollywood experiences (pre-journalism even) was going to a test screening of his film Deep Blue Sea. It turned out to be a rare Hollywood legend audiences don’t even know about, as the original ending I witnessed was erased from existence for the awesome finale the film now boasts.
Harlin explained the the quick re-edits, which I personally set in motion 14 years ago, and we also had fun talking about Cliffhanger and The Legend of Hercules.
Photo by Katherine Frey/The Washington Post
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6. Zooey Deschanel
When I caught up Zooey Deschanel at the Fox party for the Television Critics Association (of which I am a member), she asked me how I was doing. When I said I felt that this year had produced some of my best interviews, she took it as a personal challenge to have the best interview we’ve ever had, in a good decade’s worth of doing interviews with her.
I could tell she was really engaged by that and I was told afterwards by onlookers that she lit up during our talk.
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5. Michael J Fox
This was the number one interview I’d waited my whole career for. I thought it entirely possible that I would never get to interview Michael J. Fox, since his Parkinson’s Disease made his acting appearances more rare, and he wouldn’t exactly do press interviews for guest starring roles. I even had a near miss with him when they did the Back to the Future 25th Anniversary press conference in New York, and I couldn’t go.
But, Fox is back with a new TV show, which I personally think is great. “The Michael J. Fox Show” is everything I want a family sitcom to be and he’s so self-deprecating on it. I didn’t get to go one on one with Fox, but even sharing an interview with the Television Critics Association was so fulfilling, and I got to pitch him my idea for Back to the Future IV. Hopefully I can incept that into happening for 2015.
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4. Mike Newell
Here is a filmmaker who was really engaged by the questions I asked and we had a genuine banter discussing his Great Expectations adaptation and other career highlights. Where I could really tell he engaged was when I asked him about the maligned Prince of Persia film and he called me a sod. Now, the very British director of the classic Brit-com Four Weddings and a Funeral calling me a sod? That’s priceless.
Photo by ChinaFotoPress/ChinaFotoPress via Getty Images
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3. Beverly D’Angelo
This was another longtime dream interview. The Vacation movies were so important to me, I think the Griswolds are a national treasure and I always had a crush on D’Angelo. I finally got to talk to her for Bounty Killer, a movie in which she only has one scene, but it was so worth it.
D’Angelo appreciated my in-depth knowledge of her work and playfully flirted with me for watching the R-rated Vacation when I was 10. I proved myself to her when we discussed American History X though, and she ended up speaking to me for twice the allotted time.
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2. Paul Walker
Paul Walker would have made this list anyway, because we had such a great interview that was personal both for him and it turned out for myself as well. Now that he’s gone, it’s even more important to me that I got the chance to speak with him one last time.
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1. Winona Ryder
This was the moment I knew I was onto something this year. My interview with Winona Ryder started off well, with a personal discussion of writing materials as she admired my notebook. We had a good discussion of her latest film, The Iceman, but it was when I started asking about classic Winona Ryder movies that we really connected.
This is what I love about interviewing actors and filmmakers, when we can share ideas about the whole body of work that made me inquisitive about film. I can’t believe I was the first one to tell her she should’ve chosen Ben Stiller in Reality Bites. Even Siskel and Ebert thought that, but it took me 20 years to deliver the message (which I then took back when I rewatched the film).
Photo by Vera Anderson/WireImage
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Honorable Mentions
I would be remiss if I let 2013 end without acknowledging a few more landmark interviews for me. It was a great opportunity to meet Alejandro Jodorowsky at the Cannes Film Festival. Elliott Gould was sitting in his boxer shorts while we spoke. I’d waited years to talk to Jaco Van Dormael about his brilliant Mr. Nobody and we finally did this year.
Christopher Lloyd was another long time dream interview, and he actually likes my idea for Back to the Future IV. Wes Craven and I got really deep into the meaning of horror -- and let’s all acknowledge just how badass it was to sit and interview Metallica.
