DVD REVIEW: "Interview"

Steve Buscemi and Sienna Miller in "Interview"

I remember standing backstage in the press section at the 1979 Grammy Awards ceremonies. The press section is where, after someone has received a Grammy, he or she, along with the celebrity presenter, is ushered to so that they can be interviewed. This was when pop music journalism was still in its infancy and I found myself surrounded by a lot of sportswriters whose editors gave them the additional assignment of covering the Grammies. Emmylou Harris was one of the award winners that year for her album "Blue Kentucky Girl." I first noticed Ms. Harris six years earlier when she recorded the album "Grievous Angel" with Gram Parsons. She released her first solo effort, "Pieces of the Sky" in 1975 and had at least three other marvelous albums to her credit before "Blue Kentucky Girl." So it was an embarrassment to me and it had to be a slap in the face to Ms. Harris when she was brought into the media room and one of these sports writer types shoved to the front to ask her "How does it feel to win a Grammy with your very first record."

I remembered that incident watching the opening moments of Steve Buscemi's "Interview," in which he plays a journalist, Pierre Peders, totally unprepared to interview Katya (Sienna Miller), a beautiful star of horror movies and a television program that is supposed to be something like "Sex in the City." In fact, I not only remembered it, I completely bought into the fact that Peders, who works for a weekly news magazine and thinks of himself as a hot-shot investigative political reporter, would go into this assignment with complete disdain for the subject matter. What happens next in this movie, however, I didn't buy into.

First, a little background on why this movie even exists. It is a remake of a 2003 movie ofthe same name by Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, a direct descendant of Vincent's brother. Van Gogh, who gained a reputation as an outspoken opponent of political Islam, planned to remake the film along with two others in the United States. However, on Nov. 2, 2004, as he was bicycling to work, he was shot to death by a countryman with ties to terrorist groups. As a tribute to van Gogh, Buscemi and two other American actor-directors got together to remake three of van Gogh's film. This is the first of the three.

Peders and Katya meet in a restaurant where they trade insults and from which both leave seething with anger at the other. But when Katya feels responsible for Peders getting into an accident, she takes him to her loft apartment where the bulk of the film takes place and where we see a very elementary remake of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" ("You tell me your deepest, darkest secret and I'll tell you mine"). So while I did buy into the basic premise of this movie I certainly didn't buy into the idea that this reporter or any legitimate reporter would be mentally seduced like Peders is, nor did I accept the idea that Katya's handlers (agents, managers, publicists, etc.) would allow her to do a late-night interview in her apartment during which she drinks heavily, snorts a couple lines of coke, sexually body presses Peders into the kitchen counter and basically toys with the poor guy for an hour.

I did, however, thoroughly enjoy watching Buscemi and Miller go through the explorations of these two characters. It was fascinating to see the layers being revealed. Buscemi is a wonderful actor, never showy, always feeling at home in whatever role he plays. And Miller nails perfectly the actress who knows that she isn't the greatest talent in the business, but is her own distinct person and is entitled to being unique, the woman who is smart enough to how how to play dumb.

Grade: B-