Looks like Our Boy Zach ("I'm a Gay Man") Quinto's Margin Call is a Winner!Yay!

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20537442,00.html


Zachary Quinto:
I'm a Gay Man
By Dahvi Shira
Sunday October 16, 2011 09:20 AM EDT



Zachary Quinto' s eight-month run in the recent New York stage revival of Angels in America was an eye-opening experience for him.
 
Since the project, the actor, 34 – who had an acclaimed role as Louis Ironson, a man who abandons his AIDS-stricken boyfriend – publicly discusses his much-questioned sexual orientation for the first time.
 
In a new interview in New York  magazine, Quinto calls his work in the off-Broadway play the "most challenging thing I've ever done as an actor, and the most rewarding."
 
"At the same time," he adds, "as a gay man, it made me feel like there's still so much work to be done, and there's still so many things that need to be looked at and addressed."

Later in the interview, when the topic changes to legalizing gay marriage and the suicide of bullied gay teen Jamey Rodemeyer, the actor once again refers to himself as a "gay man." He says that when it comes to the different rights and treatment that come with being homosexual, "there's a hopelessness that surrounds it."
 
"Where's this disparity coming from, and why can't we as a culture and society dig deeper to examine that?" he says. "We're terrified of facing ourselves."
 
The star of Star Trek  and TV's Heroes  had long refused to comment about his sexuality, though he has been an outspoken supporter of bully victims and has played a number of gay roles, including on Tori Spelling's TV show So NoTORIous  and on the new FX series American Horror Story.

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

http://nymag.com/movies/features/zachary-quinto-2011-10/


What’s Up, Spock?
He might be a famous Vulcan,
but Zachary Quinto has no problem
being fully human.

By Benjamin Wallace
Published Oct 16, 2011




L ast year, when Zachary Quinto was starring in the Signature Theatre’s restaging of Angels in America, he would find himself at Cafe Mogador, near the place where he was staying in the East Village, imagining what it must have been like when, say, fifteen of the 40 people in the place were skeletal and dying. “Doing that play made me realize how lucky I was to be born when I was born and to not have to witness the decimation of an entire generation of amazingly talented and otherwise vital men.” He’s saying this on an Indian-summer morning at a café on West 12th Street, just a few blocks from another of that play’s touchstones, the now-shuttered St. Vincent’s Hospital—a place where many of those men died. Quinto, who had arrived in ambi-­seasonal Silver Lake camouflage—brown wool cap, patterned T-shirt, dark jeans, New Balance trainers, ball-chain necklace, facial scruff, and aviator sunglasses—is in a reflective mood.

Physically, the actor is most recognizable for his boldface em-dash eyebrows, which have been supporting actors in the two roles for which he is best known, his soul-searching, high-fidelity rendition of Spock in J. J. Abrams’s high-velocity rendition of Star Trek  and his breakout role as psychopathic killer Sylar in Heroes. In the past two years, Quinto, 34, has been demonstrating his breadth in a series of less Comic-Con-friendly roles. There was his acclaimed stint in Angels as conflicted but self-­involved Louis Ironson, who abandons his AIDS-stricken boyfriend, Prior Walter. His role as intimacy-impaired vegan boyfriend to Anna Faris’s unlucky-in-love singleton in What’s Your Number?  was less wrenching to watch.

Quinto seems to see himself in transition. He asks if he can record our conversation, for, he explains, “archival purposes … I just find that there’s something about looking back on interviews, whether for purposes of remembering what I said about something or if it’s for posterity when I’m 75 … I find that communication as an actor and person is an important part of who I am … and I’m really drawn into the psychology of those dynamics.”

For one thing, he’s willing to unambiguously talk about his sexual orientation. His eight-month role in Angels  was both “the most challenging thing I’ve ever done as an actor and the most rewarding” he says. Having to inhabit that terrible lost world, if only in his mind, took a toll. “And at the same time, as a gay man, it made me feel like there’s still so much work to be done, and there’s still so many things that need to be looked at and addressed.”

Quinto has played a series of gay roles, including on Tori Spelling’s TV show So NoTORIous,  and on the new FX series American Horror Story,  where he plays the kinky dead owner of the haunted house, and has been outspoken about gay-rights issues. Last year, the Times,  in profiling him for Angels,  noted that “the blogosphere is rife with speculation about his sexuality” but that “he prefers not to feed the rumor mill with either substantiation or dismissal.” That has changed. A little while later in our conversation, speaking of the cultural bipolarity that can see gay marriage legalized in New York in the same year that yet another gay teenager, Jamey Rodemeyer, was bullied and killed himself, Quinto says, “And again, as a gay man I look at that and say there’s a hopelessness that surrounds it, but as a human being I look at it and say ‘Why? Where’s this disparity coming from, and why can’t we as a culture and society dig deeper to examine that?’ We’re terrified of facing ourselves.”

Quinto, who lives in L.A., came to town to promote his film Margin Call,  a ­financial-crisis thriller in which he co-stars alongside Kevin Spacey, Stanley Tucci, and Jeremy Irons and the first feature for his production company, Before the Door Pictures, formed with two school friends from Carnegie Mellon University. With hundreds of protesters camped out in Zuccotti Park under the banner Occupy Wall Street, “the timing couldn’t be more impeccable for us to try to create a dialogue, which is exactly why we made the movie in the first place,” he says between bites of an omelette.

As a producer of Margin Call,  which wrapped just two days before Angels  began rehearsals, Quinto had a hand in everything from casting to raising the $3 million needed to make the independent film. “But my assertion has always been that if you’re going to make a movie about the financial crisis, you should do it in a fiscally responsible way, so I’m glad our budget was low.” For the seventeen-day shoot last June, the cast and crew took over the entire 42nd floor of One Penn Plaza, near Madison Square Garden, which had recently been vacated by a trading firm. To get ready for his role as Peter, a laconically intense young risk analyst who is the first to spot the rot that could bring down the massively overleveraged Wall Street bank where he works, Quinto spent time with analysts at Citibank, observing their work but also spending time with them outside the office. “It allowed me to see the humanity of their job, the ways in which their jobs affect all aspects of their lives. It was a valuable insight to me to see how rigorous that life can be, but also how alienating and lonely.”

While here for the premiere, he’s hoping to go visit the Wall Street protesters (his Margin  co-star Penn Badgley has been photographed there). “As a left-leaning Democrat, I feel a sense of resonance with their position,” he says. “But as a citizen of this country, I feel deeply unsettled that people are rising up in movements against each other. It feels like we’re missing the mark … The bottom line is we’re all fucked, and we’re all in this together.” And in fact, though a screening of the movie in Zuccotti Park might seem like a no-brainer, one of the film’s achievements is its avoidance of facile moralizing. “I don’t know that it would satisfy the people down there,” Quinto says. “The point of this movie is not to judge or to vilify or to place blame on any one company or individual. It’s really to examine the emotional impact that the decisions these people had to make along the way had on them.”

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2011/10/zachary_quinto.html


Zachary Quinto on His
Financial Crisis Movie Margin Call,
Playing the Villain,
and Occupy Wall Street
By: Benjamin Wallace
10/16/11 at 08:40 AM


Zachary Quinto.

Playing serial killer Sylar on Heroes  and Spock in Star Trek,  Zachary Quinto invested two potentially soulless roles with head-turning depth. This week sees the premiere of Margin Call,  an independent thriller about the financial crisis that he stars in and co-produced. Benjamin Wallace talked to him about being mistaken for a villain, coming back to the city where he memorably starred in a revival of Angels in America,  and the serendipitous timing of a fi-cri movie dropping at the same time as the Occupy Wall Street protest movement.


Do you think you'll pay a visit to Occupy Wall Street while you’re here in New York?
Yeah, for sure. I'm really interested in going to the 9/11 Memorial, which I haven't been to yet since it opened, and I'm really interested in going down to the protests, so I'll probably tie those into one visit at some point this week.


For a role like this role, how did you prepare? Did you meet with some Wall Street guys?
Yeah, I spent a couple afternoons with some guys at Citibank. I spent days on their desks, listening to their conversations, listening in on trading calls, getting to know them, having lunch with them, which was actually the most interesting part of it for me because it allowed me to see a little bit more of the humanity of their job. I think, for me, a real big factor of this film is the exploration of humanity and not so much the reliance on the minutiae or the details of the incredibly complex financial models everybody's working with. For me to be exposed to these guys and their personalities, their camaraderie and their relationships, to see the ways in which their jobs affect every aspect of their lives, because they're so all-consumed by the responsibilities, it was a pretty valuable insight for me.


Had the guys who you were hanging out with at Citibank been affected by the crisis?
Well,they were still there, you know what I mean? They were survivors. Many of the people that we spoke to knew scores of friends who had lost their jobs along the way, but the guys that I hung out with obviously were able to avoid that fate.


Do you remember where you were during the meltdown?
I was in L.A. And I just remember the onset of bleakness that descended around everyone. I wasn't really personally affected by it, so my relationship to it was much more filtered through the media and through friends and through a general sense of despair that seems to be lingering even now.


You weren't on any projects that got cut back because of the economy or anything like that?
I think in one way or another, most projects that any of us have been involved in over the last few years have been modified, scaled back, because of the economy, because of the corporatization of studios, but I wasn't on anything specific that suffered as a result of the financial crisis. We started raising money for Margin Call  in the pretty immediate aftermath of it, so we experienced a certain amount of challenge and resistance in trying to raise $3 million for a tiny, little independent movie. But my assertion is always that if you're gonna make a movie about the financial crisis, you should do it in a fiscally responsible way. So I'm glad our budget was low and we were able to find somebody who believed in the story enough to finance it.


I was a Heroes  watcher, so I want to ask: When your breakout role is such a strongly-defined villain, have you made any conscious effort to diversify so as not to be typecast?
I always make an effort to do that; that's just an ongoing process. If another villainous character comes along that has dimensions, I certainly wouldn't pass up the opportunity just because I've done it in a different context.


Right. How much do you encounter projection personally based on the roles you've played?
Tons and tons and tons. I think because both of the characters I've become most associated with tend to be pretty iconic in nature, archetypal, there's a lot of expectation that comes from people. Those projections are really just — they have nothing to do with me, so it's been an interesting road to navigate. I was on TV for four years and I was coming into peoples' homes, so there's a familiarity that people tend to have, which can sometimes be jarring or borderline off-putting to me because I'm not really — I'm a pretty low-key person in general, so sometimes I get jolted out of my own path or my own thoughts by someone on the street.


You lived here when you did the play Angels in America,  right?
I was here for a year. We did Margin Call,  I wrapped Margin Call,  I started rehearsals for Angels in America  two days later. It was incredible. It was the most challenging thing I've ever done as an actor. And the most rewarding, hands-down. I had not been on stage in six years and so for me to do my first play in New York and to have it be this epic masterwork that, you know, went right to the heart of so many matters that were and still are circulating both in society and in my life personally, it was an enormously rewarding and terrifying journey for sure.


What was terrifying?
Just the sheer scale of the play to begin with. And then I just think revisiting that work and revisiting the themes of that work at a time when the political and social climate of the country is shifting so dramatically and so irreversibly, to really come up against the echoes of that hatred and that bigotry and that fear that still exists in our culture, just in a different context now — you know, I feel it was just a really interesting exploration for me.

Doing that play made me realize how fortunate I am to have been born when I was born. And to not have to witness the decimation of an entire generation of amazingly talented and otherwise vital men. And at the same time, as a gay man, it made me feel like I — there's still so much work to be done. There's still so many things that need to be looked at and addressed. The undercurrent of that fear and that, you know, insidiousness still is swarming. It's still all around us. To revisit that world at all, it took a toll on me. It definitely was an incredible experience but it was really daunting at times.


What do you think is gonna happen with Occupy Wall Street? Do you think it’s gonna fizzle or grow week-by-week?
As a left-leaning Democrat, I feel a sense of resonance with their position, but as a citizen of this country, I feel deeply unsettled that people are rising up in movements against one another. It feels like we’re missing the mark. I just think it’s all broken. I think our financial system, so many aspects of our social connections, seem fractured. And I think it’s a really tenuous time for our country. I don’t know what will happen going into this election year. It seems like the Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street — there’s such tremendous disparity right now. It’s like, you have the legalization of gay marriage in the state of New York and three months later you have Jamey Rodemeyer killing himself, yet another gay teenager bullied into taking his own life. And, you know, again, as a gay man, I look at that and say there’s a hopelessness that surrounds it. But as a human being, I look at it and say, “Why? Where is this disparity coming from and why can’t we as a culture, as a society, dig deeper to examine it?” We’re terrified of facing ourselves, we’re terrified of what we’ll find and so, instead, we seem to waste time and energy with small-mindedness and intolerance and with bigotry and with hatred and with fear. And those things are just gonna — no matter if it’s Occupy Wall Street or any other social or political or financial issue, we’re hurdling towards something that is really scary to me. And I feel like Occupy Wall Street is indicative of that. But also it’s potentially valuable as a platform for people to really look at these issues. But it just feels like another opportunity for intense divisiveness and, you know, it feels like potentially another receptacle for right-wing Republicans and neo-conservatives to just undermine and invalidate and get absorbed in the quagmire of idealistic, ideological debates. The bottom line is, we’re all fucked, you know what I mean?


You guys should do a screening in Zuccotti Park.
Totally. Could you imagine? The thing is, though, I don’t know that our movie would satisfy the people enough who are down there.


It’s not demonizing enough.
It’s not. The point of this movie isn’t to judge or vilify or place blame on any one particular company or individual. It’s really to examine the emotional impact that the decisions that these people had to make along the way had on them. And it’s at the same time not lionizing or celebrating any particular institution or individual, either. There’s an ambiguity to the nature of this film that hangs over it in a good way, for me, and that’s partly why I wanted to make it.

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

What a lovely, lovely man.

Thank you, Zachary.

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0OeSs870ys&feature[/youtube]
.

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

Zachary Quinto's Blog:



10.16.11. nyc...

 By zachary quinto on October 16, 2011 8:26AM                                               
                                                                                                                               10.16.11.
                                                                                                                                     nyc...


when i found out that jamey rodemeyer killed himself - i felt deeply troubled.  but when i found out that jamey rodemeyer had made an it gets better video only months before taking his own life - i felt indescribable despair.  i also made an it gets better video last year - in the wake of the senseless and tragic gay teen suicides that were sweeping the nation at the time.  but in light of jamey's death - it became clear to me in an instant that living a gay life without publicly acknowledging it - is simply not enough to make any significant contribution to the immense work that lies ahead on the road to complete equality.  our society needs to recognize the unstoppable momentum toward unequivocal civil equality for every gay lesbian bisexual and transgendered citizen of this country.  gay kids need to stop killing themselves because they are made to feel worthless by cruel and relentless bullying.  parents need to teach their children principles of respect and acceptance.  we are witnessing an enormous shift of collective consciousness throughout the world.  we are at the precipice of great transformation within our culture and government.  i believe in the power of intention to change the landscape of our society - and it is my intention to live an authentic life of compassion and integrity and action.  jamey rodemeyer's life changed mine.  and while his death only makes me wish that i had done this sooner - i am eternally grateful to him for being the catalyst for change within me.  now i can only hope to serve as the same catalyst for even one other person in this world.  that - i believe - is all that we can ask of ourselves and of each other.

zq.


http://www.zacharyquinto.com/news/2011/10/post.html

[Sophia]

I WANNA MARRY HIM 

What a sweetheart.


Thank you John, for sharing the stories. It Inspire me even more.

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

I WANNA MARRY HIM 

What a sweetheart.


Thank you John, for sharing the stories. It Inspire me even more.

 


He is a cutie, isn't he!   

[Sophia]

 


He is a cutie, isn't he!   

OMG!! Those glasses and that haircut.

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4-4iqxcHLw[/youtube]
.

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

Zachary is not only an actor in the movie, but he is one of the producers.

I am so proud of him.  

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjZ-ke1kJrA&feature=related[/youtube]

What a cast!

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rgd5PL5yto&feature=related[/youtube]



[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irNjmiGSwb8[/youtube].

[Front-Ranger]

Thanks for the Zach fest, John! I agree with you...I'm proud of him too!! And another thing...I'm so glad that Angels in America exists! It's one of my favorite works of art!

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

http://nymag.com/movies/reviews/margin-call-2011-10/


Disaster Movie
Margin Call  inadvertently becomes
the film of this financial moment.

By David Edelstein
Published Oct 16, 2011


Demi Moore and Simon Baker in Margin Call



Movie night at Zuccotti Park!

Yes, the fine men and women dug in downtown need to get themselves a big screen, a projector, and a few thousand tubs of popcorn, because J. C. Chandor’s Margin Call  is to Occupy Wall Street what The China Syndrome  was to Three Mile Island: the fiction that will make it, here in Movie-Mad America, ever so much more real.

Beyond that, it’s a hell of a picture. And shrewd.

We the audience are not down below with—or even, necessarily, on the side of—the bankrupt, the downsized, the unshowered masses. We’re waaaay above the street in the offices of a mighty finance firm staring out at a sea of blue-lit high-rises. We’re perched over the shoulder of risk-management underling Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto) as he scrutinizes a computer file passed on to him by his newly deep-sixed boss, Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci), and then suddenly gets that same “Oh … my … God” look on his face as the guy in Deep Impact  who realizes a planet-killing meteor is headed straight for Earth. Peter has just seen many of his colleagues coldly given their marching orders, so doom is in the air. But this new development is … apocalyptic.

No, I can’t fully elucidate the nature of the onrushing disaster—and one of the film’s few jokes is that the higher-ups can’t read the elaborate graphs either. But they all, to a person, know instantly what’s coming: complete economic conflagration. What spooks them is not the realization that their assets are toxic. It’s the imminent prospect of everyone else’s knowing. So Peter pulls his half-drunk boss, Will Emerson (Paul Bettany), out of a club, and then Will calls his boss, Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey), who turns his car around and heads back to the firm, and we move with Peter (who, being a former rocket scientist, is brought along to explain the situation) up to each successive corporate level—or, depending on your perspective, down to each Dantean circle.

Every character is a subtler breed of predator than we’re used to—or a more evolved Randian, or a more sanguine (and better-paid) moral accommodationist. Bettany’s drunken nihilist, with his weird (Irish?) accent, gives way to Spacey’s snappish company man, who escorts us to Simon Baker’ s smug Jared Cohen—the most obviously repellent Master of the Universe, with no evident soul to lose—and Demi Moore’s grim Sarah Robertson, with her faintly wizened face and short skirt, the lone female top executive, the one who passed up the chance to have a family and will be first in line for the chop. The helicopter setting down on the roof in the wee hours brings Jeremy Irons’s John (rhymes with Fuld) Tuld, more of a smiling killer than Boris Karloff in his heyday and far less accountable to a Higher Authority.

Margin Call  is low-key, the histrionics dampened by the thick carpeting and double-paned glass, by the weight of keeping up appearances. The characters, lit from the side and bottom, get that gray, greasy, muzzy look of people who haven’t slept and whose hearts are racing too fast even to try. Apart from Quinto’s Sullivan, who comes from the world of pure science and retains a smidgen of ingenuousness, these are not likable figures—and yet however much we hate them, we are on their side. For one thing, there’s no one else around. For another, Chandor has structured Margin Call  like a disaster movie, and we can’t help being fascinated by problem-solving, especially when it involves throwing around obscene amounts of money. Finally, we moviegoers have more fun when we identify with winners, no matter how unsavory. It’s a habit that has been more than a century in the making and will be difficult to shake. That’s why none of those Debbie Downer Iraq movies made a dime.

There is a moral center—of a sort. Spacey’s Sam Rogers begins the film in his office as many of his employees are fired, staring out the window, his eyes red from crying. But his tears are for his dying dog. Called to rouse his remaining forces, he emerges, stony as Dick Cheney, and tells them they’ve survived and have therefore “won.” But even this not-nice, philosophically complacent capitalist turns out to have a line he’s loath to cross: a fire sale of worthless assets dumped on unsuspecting customers, many of whom will go bust. How, he asks, can it make business sense when those people will never trust you again? Tuld says he’ll take care of that, and maybe he can: Goldman Sachs was caught betting against the very assets it was pitching to clients—and its executives are unbowed.

Spacey gives a major performance, his best in many years, as a near-dead soul groggily shaking off layers of insulation and beginning to feel again, and Quinto triumphs over not only a part with fewer and fewer lines but also the memories we have of him glowering at a computer screen in 24. There is a special joy in seeing an old-style Joan Crawford ham like Demi Moore stop emoting and give the performance of her life, and in watching a pro like Tucci signal momentous emotion merely by gritting his teeth. Irons is a little sepulchral for my taste, but the way in which he drops the boom on Moore’s character—almost tenderly—shows his own killer genius.

Just as fascinating as what’s onscreen will be Margin Call’ s reception. Hard-core Randians will babble about “Austrian economics” and Hollywood liberalism—but how much weight will their voices have in a world of such unchecked financial chicanery, a world in which Adam Smith would run screaming into the arms of Karl Marx? And no one will look at Irons’s Tuld and say—as they said of Wall Street’s Gordon Gekko—“I want to be that guy!” I’d sooner pitch a tent in Zuccotti Park.

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20483133_20538269,00.html


Margin Call (2011)
Reviewed by Owen Gleiberman
Oct 21, 2011


HIGH-STAKES Zachary Quinto and Penn Badgley
in Margin Call


You could describe Margin Call  as a thriller (it's wired with suspense), yet the tension all comes from words. Set in the fall of 2008 at a fictionalized version of Lehman Brothers, the film is steeped in the finance jargon of our time; one of its running jokes is that even the people who speak this language will stop to remark, ''Say it in plain English!'' Yet as written and directed byJ.C. Chandor (it's his debut feature), Margin Call  isn't medicine. It has the hookiness of good David Mamet, the into-the-night electricity of something like 12 Angry Men.  Call it 12 Sleazy Men (and one woman — hello, Demi Moore).

As a last-ditch act of loyalty, a downsized risk-management executive (Stanley Tucci) hands the program he was working on to one of his analysts, a young sharpie played by Zachary Quinto. Quinto, with his thick features, upswept hair, and eyebrows that are still more than a little Spockian, makes pensive concentration look like something out of an action movie. What he learns is that the company's leverage has veered out of orbit: The bundling of mortgages with no value has caught up with it. In a word, the party is over. He delivers the bad news, and the company's leaders then spend one long night trying to figure out what to do. The plan that emerges is dastardly: The only way to save their financial skins — never mind anyone else's — is to dump their now-worthless holdings onto an unknowing market, as each of them pockets millions and walks away.

The gripping intrigue of Margin Call  is the way it puts you right up close to the decision-making, the mix of greed, fear, and cunning. Chandor gets what Oliver Stone was going for in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps  with a lot less fuss. And what a director of actors! Margin Call  has pace problems in its second half; it peaks a little too early. But it captures how our financial institutions became secret havens to a selfishness so undiluted it was sociopathic. You watch this drama of big money with a tingle of toxic fascination. A-

[Monika]

What a cast!

My thought exactly. Especially nice to see Simon Baker on the big screen.

As an old Trekkie, I was very, VERY sceptic about a new Star Trek movie coming out. But I loved it - and especially Zach´s performance as Spock. He nailed it.

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

http://www.salon.com/2011/10/20/margin_call_inside_the_dreaded_1_percent/

 
“Margin Call”
Inside the dreaded 1 percent
Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany and Demi Moore
star in a chiller about the insiders who caused
the 2008 collapse

By Andrew O'Hehir
Thursday, Oct 20, 2011 8:00 AM 08:27:19 EDT


Kevin Spacey in "Margin Call"


One friend of mine couldn’t resist a little acrid commentary when she heard about the premise of “Margin Call,” a feature film that follows 24 frenzied hours inside a fictional New York investment bank during the great financial collapse of 2008. “Oh, great,” she snarled. “Now we’re supposed to feel human compassion toward the lizards who screwed the whole world?” (OK, the words she used were not “lizards” or “screwed.”) Thankfully, the answer to her question is yes but also no. Writer-director J.C. Chandor’s impressive debut film does indeed capture its cast of high-powered bankers as human beings, and features one of Kevin Spacey’s best screen performances as the firm’s middle-aged ace salesman, trapped between his longtime loyalty and his waning sense of ethics. But explaining how these guys justified their rapacious and immoral behavior to themselves is not the same thing as excusing it.

There’s a modest but growing library of movies that either soul-search the dark national mood or try to answer the “how did we get here?” question, and a few that try to do both. Largely, of course, I’m talking about nonfiction films like Charles Ferguson’s righteously angry “Inside Job,” which looks in retrospect like an Occupy Wall Street call to arms, or “The Corporation,” a prescient and remarkable documentary from the Canadian duo Jennifer Abbott and Mark Achbar that didn’t get much of a look on its 2004 release and very much deserves a new life. Here’s what I wrote about it back then: “This is a radical and didactic work, and its premise at first may seem outlandish: The modern corporation, which has been legally endowed with many of the rights and conditions of personhood, is in fact a psychopathic personality, constitutionally incapable of doing good or caring about others. But the longer you sit and watch the movie, the more irresistible the conclusion becomes.”

That makes an excellent backdrop for “Margin Call,” which captures a group of men (and one woman, an excellent if modest role for Demi Moore) who are neither good nor evil in themselves, dealing with a rapidly unfolding crisis against a context of total ruthlessness and amorality. There are definite structural and thematic similarities between “Margin Call” and John Wells’ “The Company Men” from last year, in that both are stagey Recession-era guy dramas shot in office buildings with all-star casts, and lots of shots of people packing up personal effects while the security guard waits for them. But Wells’ movie is prodigiously sentimental in its portrayal of masculinity and work, and suggests that working outdoors with Kevin Costner is the salve for America’s wounded manhood. (In real life, as some of my readers pointed out, Costner’s struggling Boston contractor would hire undocumented Mexican immigrants at minimum wage, not an unemployed corporate sales dude accustomed to pulling down 150 G’s.) The guys in Chandor’s movie, on the other hand, long ago signed away their souls, and the devil doesn’t take backsies.

There’s a key scene in “Margin Call” that could just as well be in “The Company Men,” or for that matter in some half-forgotten Arthur Miller play. Stanley Tucci, as a risk management analyst the bank has just fired, sits on the stoop of his Brooklyn Heights brownstone with Paul Bettany, playing a laddish enforcer type with a Cockney drawl who is Spacey’s sidekick. Tucci’s character, Eric Dale, explains that he used to be an engineer, and once built a bridge between two towns in Ohio and West Virginia that saved thousands of people thousands of hours and thousands of gallons of gas, and quite likely saved a few lives as well. Bettany’s character, Will Emerson, listens attentively, but they’re both looking at Eric’s past from a bemused distance, across a wide, deep and fast-moving river, and there’s no need to attach a moral codicil to the story. They’re warrior priests in a secret brotherhood now, those who enrich themselves and a tiny handful of other people — the 1 percent, in contemporary parlance — by pushing numbers around in a highly specialized fashion. Very shortly, Eric will agree to return to the firm, as he puts it, to sit quietly in a room at a rate of more than $176,000 an hour.

When Eric was fired the previous morning, as part of a relatively routine herd-culling operation, he handed off a Zip drive to his hotshot deputy, Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto), with the injunction, “Be careful.” Eric has noticed that the firm’s aggressive position in the subprime mortgage market has started to come unglued over the past few weeks, and as Peter crunches the numbers late that night, he grasps the ramifications: The bank will rapidly be swamped in bad debt if it doesn’t find a way to unload it all right away. So Emerson is hauled away from his drinking and skirt-chasing, Spacey’s Sam Rogers is summoned from the vet — where he’s been watching his dog be put to sleep — and the firm’s brain trust is rapidly assembled for a post-midnight meeting.

There’s definitely an actors’ showcase quality to “Margin Call,” and Chandor seems in various ways more like a playwright than a filmmaker, but throughout the long night the tension rises and the characters crackle. Moore and Aasif Mandvi show up as senior executives who grill Peter on his findings and his credentials, under the watchful eye of Simon Baker as Jared Cohen, the firm’s boyish president, resented and feared by all. Quinto nicely underplays his numbers-geek role, a guy who in a dumber, more Hollywood version of this movie (e.g., Oliver Stone’s dreadful “Wall Street” sequel) would have been made the hero. Peter explains that he has an advanced degree in propulsion from MIT. “So you’re a rocket scientist,” Cohen remarks mildly. “Interesting.”

After that meeting comes the next one, around 4 o’clock in the morning, at which the whole situation must be laid out before John Tuld, the firm’s principal owner, played by a cheerful and cadaverous Jeremy Irons. With almost diabolical glee, Tuld tells Peter (who of course he has never met) to explain things to him as if he were addressing a small child, or a golden retriever. I don’t know enough about finance to judge Chandor’s suggestion that one firm and perhaps one man could have launched the cascading collapse of ’08, but then again that’s only partly what he’s suggesting. Even a billionaire financier like Tuld, as he explains, is at the mercy of larger forces, and his decision to sell off assets he knows are worthless — as several major Wall Street firms did — is simply a matter of Darwinian survival, of playing the game by long-established rules.

Despite Spacey’s two Oscars, his screen acting has played second fiddle in recent years to his career on the London stage and as artistic director at the Old Vic. He has so often played hooded or secretive characters, a fact now inextricably connected with his silence about his personal life. Sam Rogers is not an especially enigmatic character, but he is a profoundly wounded one who has given his life to a business and an institution that has relied for years on his unscrupulous conduct and is about to kick him to the curb. The music has stopped, as Irons’ character says, and Sam finds himself with no job, no family, no future, no moral high ground and a big pile of money, digging a hole to bury his dead dog. It’s one of the great performances found in American movies this year.

“Margin Call” opens this week in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Madison, Wis., Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Portland, Ore., St. Louis, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C., with wider release to follow. It is also available on-demand from many cable and satellite providers.

[Jeff Wrangler]

That's quite a cast for Margin Call: Stanley Tucci, Paul Bettany, Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons.

(I'm not forgetting anybody. Those are the four names that impress me most.)

[serious crayons]

Good going, Zach Quinto!

Soon, thanks to Zach Quinto and others, an A-list actor coming out will be no big deal. And eventually A-list actors will be out long before they become A-list, or even actors. In a couple of generations, people will wonder at the oddness of a culture where being GLBT was ever expected to be something you'd keep quiet about.

[delalluvia]

Good going, Zach Quinto!

Soon, thanks to Zach Quinto and others, an A-list actor coming out will be no big deal. And eventually A-list actors will be out long before they become A-list, or even actors. In a couple of generations, people will wonder at the oddness of a culture where being GLBT was ever expected to be something you'd keep quiet about.

I don't believe Zach Quinto is A-list yet.  I'd peg him as a starlet an up and comer.  And honestly, while I'm extremely glad he came out because of the suicide, it will really make little difference to mainstream America.  They already suspect most actors - those who aren't Stallone, Eastwood etc. - and believe them to be all Hollywood liberals anyway.

[Luvlylittlewing]

My thought exactly. Especially nice to see Simon Baker on the big screen.

As an old Trekkie, I was very, VERY sceptic about a new Star Trek movie coming out. But I loved it - and especially Zach´s performance as Spock. He nailed it.

I agree with you!  He was awesome as the young Mr. Spock!  The entire time I watched Star Trek I thought Zach looked familiar but I couldn't place him.  I rushed home to find out whatever I could about that cutie.

[Luvlylittlewing]

I don't believe Zach Quinto is A-list yet.  I'd peg him as a starlet an up and comer.  And honestly, while I'm extremely glad he came out because of the suicide, it will really make little difference to mainstream America.  They already suspect most actors - those who aren't Stallone, Eastwood etc. - and believe them to be all Hollywood liberals anyway.

Some suspect even them!

[serious crayons]

I don't believe Zach Quinto is A-list yet.  I'd peg him as a starlet an up and comer.  And honestly, while I'm extremely glad he came out because of the suicide, it will really make little difference to mainstream America.  They already suspect most actors - those who aren't Stallone, Eastwood etc. - and believe them to be all Hollywood liberals anyway.

You're right, he's not. A-list stars are those who you'd mention when talking about a movie to someone else. Like you'd say, "You know 'Oceans 11' -- that one with George Clooney and Brad Pitt and Matt Damon" (all A-list, easily identifiable by the majority of Americans). You wouldn't say, "You know the new 'Star Trek,' starring Zach Quinto and Chris Pines" (names I would bet don't automatically summon a face for the majority of Americans).

But Zach Quinto doesn't seem quite B-list, either. To me, B list celebrities are those who haven't held one of the top starring roles a big-budget major studio movie, playing a beloved TV character, and didn't also star in a successful TV series. Maybe he's A-minus list.

But my point about him coming out wasn't to say this action would cause sweeping changes in mainstream America. I meant that (assuming he remains successful and -- unlike Rupert Everett -- doesn't ultimately blame his coming out for torpedoing his career) other young gay stars will look at him and think that what he did was cool, which it totally is, and feel more comfortable coming out themselves, and eventually mainstream America will come to think it's not a big deal.

Tell you what, though, your vision of mainstream America who think all movie stars except for the likes of Sly and Clint are gay -- that doesn't match my encounters with mainstream America. I know you live in Texas and I live in Minnesota, but even objectively speaking I wouldn't automatically consider "mainstream America" to be synonymous with conservatives who view "Hollywood liberals" with suspicion. Liberals are part of mainstream America, too.

Second, in my experience mainstream America (meaning, middle-class, middle-income, non-famous people with sort of regular jobs and middle-of-the-road politics) is far LESS aware of who might or might not be gay in Hollywood than you or I would be. At a family gathering with the ex-in-laws, I once brought up the idea that Tom Cruise is often rumored to be gay. Everybody else there -- all about as mainstream America as you can get -- just looked baffled. Not only did they not consider him gay, they'd never even heard that he MIGHT be. I bet if you ask my ex-in-laws to name five gay Hollywood celebrities, they'd get through Ellen DeGeneres, maybe one or two others, and then have to reach for Liberace.

[Luvlylittlewing]

You're right, he's not. A-list stars are those who you'd mention when talking about a movie to someone else. Like you'd say, "You know 'Oceans 11' -- that one with George Clooney and Brad Pitt and Matt Damon" (all A-list, easily identifiable by the majority of Americans). You wouldn't say, "You know the new 'Star Trek,' starring Zach Quinto and Chris Pines" (names I would bet don't automatically summon a face for the majority of Americans).

But Zach Quinto doesn't seem quite B-list, either. To me, B list celebrities are those who haven't held one of the top starring roles a big-budget major studio movie, playing a beloved TV character, and didn't also star in a successful TV series. Maybe he's A-minus list.

But my point about him coming out wasn't to say this action would cause sweeping changes in mainstream America. I meant that (assuming he remains successful and -- unlike Rupert Everett -- doesn't ultimately blame his coming out for torpedoing his career) other young gay stars will look at him and think that what he did was cool, which it totally is, and feel more comfortable coming out themselves, and eventually mainstream America will come to think it's not a big deal.

Tell you what, though, your vision of mainstream America who think all movie stars except for the likes of Sly and Clint are gay -- that doesn't match my encounters with mainstream America. I know you live in Texas and I live in Minnesota, but even objectively speaking I wouldn't automatically consider "mainstream America" to be synonymous with conservatives who view "Hollywood liberals" with suspicion. Liberals are part of mainstream America, too.

Second, in my experience mainstream America (meaning, middle-class, middle-income, non-famous people with sort of regular jobs and middle-of-the-road politics) is far LESS aware of who might or might not be gay in Hollywood than you or I would be. At a family gathering with the ex-in-laws, I once brought up the idea that Tom Cruise is often rumored to be gay. Everybody else there -- all about as mainstream America as you can get -- just looked baffled. Not only did they not consider him gay, they'd never even heard that he MIGHT be. I bet if you ask my ex-in-laws to name five gay Hollywood celebrities, they'd get through Ellen DeGeneres, maybe one or two others, and then have to reach for Liberace.

Those of us who live in California, especially those in So Cal (I've lived there for many years) have sort of an "in" when it comes to who is gay and who is not in show business, and are very cynical.  My brother has met many actors and actresses, and in his opinion, all male actors are gay, no exception.  I've met my share of show biz people, and I work with some folks who have SAG cards.  But I don't speculate.

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

Those of us who live in California, especially those in So Cal (I've lived there for many years) have sort of an "in" when it comes to who is gay and who is not in show business, and are very cynical.

That might be a little bit like Italian cynicism about the inner workings of the Vatican, because they are so close--"one pope dies, they (or we) make another."

 

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/10/21/movies/margin-call-with-zachary-quinto-review.html




Movie Review
NYT Critics' Pick
Margin Call (2011)
Number Crunching at the Apocalypse
By A. O. SCOTT
Published: October 20, 2011


Zachary Quinto and Penn Badgley in "Margin Call."


There have been reports of hurt feelings among the bankers and brokers who have been the focus of public ire and Occupy Wall Street protests. And it is true that those poor, hard-working souls have been demonized and caricatured. Surely the much-reviled 1 percent does not consist of plutocrats in top hats or predators in blue suits, but of human beings just like the other 99 percent of us, albeit with more money and perhaps more to answer for.

That, in a way, is the message of J. C. Chandor’s “Margin Call,” which does a great deal to humanize the authors — and beneficiaries — of the 2008 financial crisis. But the film, relentless in its honesty and shrewd in its insights and techniques, is unlikely to soothe the wounded pride of the actual or aspiring ruling class. It is a tale of greed, vanity, myopia and expediency that is all the more damning for its refusal to moralize.

There are no hissable villains here, no operatic speeches condemning or celebrating greed. Just a bunch of guys (and one woman, Demi Moore) in well-tailored clothes and a state of quiet panic trying to save themselves from a global catastrophe of their own making. Watching them going about their business, you don’t feel the kind of fury inspired by “Inside Job,” Charles Ferguson’s great muckraking documentary on the origins of the financial crisis, but rather a mix of dread, disgust, pity and confusion.

And also, above all, admiration for an extraordinary feat of filmmaking. It is hard to believe that “Margin Call” is Mr. Chandor’s first feature. His formal command — his ability to imply far more than he shows or says and to orchestrate a large, complex drama out of whispers, glances and snippets of jargon — is downright awe inspiring. The movie rarely leaves the Manhattan offices of the fictional investment bank (loosely modeled on Lehman Brothers) in which it takes place and limits its action, which consists mainly of phone calls and hurried meetings, to a frenzied 24-hour period. Within that narrow frame the gears of a complex narrative mesh with ravishing clockwork precision.

“Margin Call” is a thriller, moving through ambient shadows to the anxious tempo of Nathan Larson’s hushed, anxious score. It is also a horror movie, with disaster lurking like an unseen demon outside the skyscraper windows and behind the computer screens. It is also a workplace comedy of sorts. The crackling, syncopated dialogue and the plot, full of reversals and double crosses, owe an obvious debt to David Mamet’s profane fables of deal-making machismo. Hovering over all of it is the dark romance of capital: the elegance of numbers; the kinkiness of money; the deep, rotten, erotic allure of power.

If no one in this world is patently evil, no one is innocent either. A young risk analyst named Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto) may be as close as the movie comes to a hero, but it is also possible to see what happens to him as a parable of how the system corrupts and exploits its most decent and honest minions. Working late one night Peter (who we later learn has a Ph.D. in physics) glimpses a sign of the apocalypse lurking in a mathematical model. Recent volatility in the market is threatening the stability of the mortgage-based securities that have been generating most of the company’s profits, and the resulting losses are likely to swallow this bank and make trillions of dollars vanish into thin air.

Which pretty much happened of course. The task Mr. Chandor sets himself is not to explain, once again, what occurred in 2008 — though a comparison with the journalistic records suggests that “Margin Call” is broadly accurate — but rather to explore the psychological pressures and ethical choices at work among those who caught an early glimpse of the abyss and then helped push everyone else into it.

Peter alerts his callow co-worker Seth Bregman (Penn Badgley) and their immediate superior, Will Emerson, a cynical soldier played by Paul Bettany. In a gangster movie Will would be the midlevel enforcer, entrusted with the dirty work but denied real authority. His superior is Sam Rogers, played by a splendidly world-weary Kevin Spacey. Sam oversees the sales force that has been peddling the bad securities, and he must now carry the bad news upstairs, through several more layers of company hierarchy.

There is a tense showdown with Sarah Robertson (Ms. Moore), who seems to have promoted the scheme that is now unraveling and who may have ignored warnings about its outcome. Eventually word of what Peter has learned reaches John Tuld (Jeremy Irons), the charming, dapper, black-hearted boss of bosses, who arrives by helicopter in the dead of night, like a vampire summoned from the crypt.

One of the running jokes of Mr. Chandor’s script is that the higher a person’s rank, the less he is likely to understand what the firm is actually doing. This ignorance is almost a point of pride. “I don’t get any of this stuff” — this line is repeated about Peter’s discovery by Will, then Sam, then Sam’s boss, Jared Cohen (Simon Baker) and then Tuld. In a further absurdity, one person who does get it, Peter’s mentor, Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci) has just been downsized out of the company. As a security measure his cellphone has been disconnected, which means that his increasingly desperate former colleagues are unable to find him when he might be of most use.

Not that anything can really be done. The most chilling and most believable aspect of “Margin Call” is how calmly and swiftly its drama of damage control unfolds. A scapegoat must be found, and a survival plan worked out. The consequences are acknowledged — those we are living with now — and then coldly accepted in the name of a vaporous greater good. “We have no choice.” “There is no choice.” “It’s not like we have a choice.” These phrases are uttered again and again, by people who truly believe what they are saying. Some of them may have sleepless nights ahead, but none are likely to suffer very terribly. The accomplishment of this movie is that it allows you to sympathize with them, to acknowledge the reality of their predicament, without letting them off the hook or forgetting the damage they did.

“Margin Call” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Obscene language and obscene sums of money.



From left, Penn Badgley, Zachary Quinto and Paul Bettany play analysts at an investment bank
loosely modeled on Lehman Brothers in "Margin Call."



MARGIN CALL

Opens on Friday nationwide.

Written and directed by J. C. Chandor; director of photography, Frank DeMarco; edited by Pete Beaudreau; music by Nathan Larson; production design by John Paino; costumes by Caroline Duncan; produced by Joe Jenckes, Michael Benaroya, Robert Odgen Barnum, Neal Dodson, Corey Moosa and Zachary Quinto; released by Lionsgate, Roadside Attractions and Benaroya Pictures. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes.

WITH: Kevin Spacey (Sam Rogers), Paul Bettany (Will Emerson), Jeremy Irons (John Tuld), Zachary Quinto (Peter Sullivan), Penn Badgley (Seth Bregman), Simon Baker (Jared Cohen), Demi Moore (Sarah Robertson) and Stanley Tucci (Eric Dale).

[serious crayons]

Those of us who live in California, especially those in So Cal (I've lived there for many years) have sort of an "in" when it comes to who is gay and who is not in show business, and are very cynical.  My brother has met many actors and actresses, and in his opinion, all male actors are gay, no exception.

Cynical in what way?

Where does your brother live? To me, thinking that all actors are gay is sort of the equivalent of thinking that no actors are gay.

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

But Zach Quinto doesn't seem quite B-list, either. To me, B list celebrities are those who haven't held one of the top starring roles a big-budget major studio movie, playing a beloved TV character, and didn't also star in a successful TV series. Maybe he's A-minus list.

Not for long, I think.

"Then Spock beamed in."

Wow! He's a 'Playa'--a playa with pointy ears!  






"Zach is such a powerhouse in a gentle way," [Paul] Bettany said. "He's such a go-getter. Things I've thought about doing with my life, he's just got on with it and done it."



http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-zachary-quinto-20111020-1,0,3878174.story


Zachary Quinto rides a wave
of professional, personal growth
Actor-producer Zachary Quinto is in firm control of his world,
with 'Margin Call,' his production company Before the Door's
first feature, set to premiere.

By Rebecca Keegan, Los Angeles Times
October 20, 2011


Zachary Quinto's production company's first release is "Margin Call," in which he also acts.


In late 2008, "Margin Call" looked like the kind of film project that could languish indefinitely: an unfinanced script from a first-time writer-director on a wonkish subject — the math behind Wall Street's recent collapse.

Then Spock beamed in.

Zachary Quinto had just wrapped filming on J.J. Abrams' reboot of "Star Trek," playing the pointy-eared young Starfleet Academy commander, and his NBC show "Heroes" had a cult following. He had formed a production company with two drama school friends and was looking for projects, so he met "Margin Call" writer-director J.C. Chandor at the Fairfax Farmers Market on the recommendation of a mutual friend.

"I recognized that I had a window of opportunity that had opened because of my exposure as an actor," Quinto, 34, said in an interview at the Silver Lake offices of Before the Door, his company with Neal Dodson and Corey Moosa. A bungalow that was once Quinto's apartment, Before the Door feels as much like a home as a business, with Quinto's genial mixed Irish wolfhound, Noah, padding through the rooms. "I wanted to take some control of the stories that I'm a part of telling."

"Margin Call" became Before the Door's first feature, with Quinto starring as a Wall Street analyst who discovers a catastrophic flaw in his company's financial formula. Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany and Demi Moore are some of his equivocating bosses, who must determine how to manage the crisis; Penn Badgley is a young colleague out of his depth, mathematically and emotionally. As the film arrives in theaters Friday, Quinto is navigating another, more personal moment in the spotlight, and telling more of his own story: Last weekend he revealed that he's gay.

On his personal blog, Quinto said that the suicide of gay 14-year-old Jamey Rodemeyer had motivated him to come forward. "In light of Jamey's death," Quinto wrote, "it became clear to me in an instant that living a gay life without publicly acknowledging it is simply not enough to make any significant contribution to the immense work that lies ahead on the road to complete equality."

If Quinto has found new clarity in his personal life, as a producer and actor he seems more intrigued by ethical gray zones. "Margin Call" tracks a Lehman Bros.-like investment bank over a 24-hour period on the eve of the 2008 financial meltdown, and Chandor, the son of a Merrill Lynch banker, unfurls his story not as an anti-Wall Street polemic but as a kind of economic disaster movie, propelled by a series of morally ambiguous decisions.

"The script required you to invest in the emotional life of these people who have been so blanketly vilified and commonly blamed for what happened in 2008 and what continues to happen today," Quinto said. "I liked that it didn't toe a moral line. It doesn't rake people over the coals, and it doesn't lionize anybody. The ambiguity of it was the thing that struck the loudest chord."

Once Quinto attached himself to Chandor's script, he set about finding actors to join him, beginning with Spacey, whom he knew through friends in the New York theater scene.

"It wasn't just Zachary's connections," said Chandor. "It was the follow-through. We spent months together lobbying agents, meeting with actors. He is a very, very serious guy, and there's a deep intelligence there combined with this insane fire and energy and motivation that people pick up on and react to."

Before the Door secured "Margin Call's" $3.5-million budget from a relative Hollywood newcomer, Seattle real estate scion Michael Benaroya of Benaroya Pictures. Chandor shot the film in 17 days in summer 2010 on an abandoned trading floor of a Manhattan skyscraper, with actors using old offices as dressing rooms — a process that tested Quinto's multi-tasking abilities as an actor-producer. "To get money, get actors, work out schedules, locations, hire a crew — all of that stuff was so consuming that all of a sudden I was like, 'Oh, my God, we're actually shooting this movie. I have to focus on my work as an actor.'"

"Zach is such a powerhouse in a gentle way," Bettany said. "He's such a go-getter. Things I've thought about doing with my life, he's just got on with it and done it."

Quinto says his drive is rooted in a traumatic event from his childhood in Pittsburgh. When he was 7, his father — a hairdresser and son of Italian immigrants — died of cancer. "I don't know that I would have been so self-sufficient and so ambitious if I hadn't lost him," Quinto said. "It triggered some sort of survival instinct in me."

At a high school summer theater program, Quinto met Dodson. They attended Carnegie Mellon University together, along with Moosa. The school ethos infuses Before the Door — the company is named for a CMU drama school exercise, and Quinto estimates that 85% of Before the Door's future projects involve CMU connections. The company has produced two graphic novels and has several TV and film projects in development and another feature just shot, a $500,000 3-D horror film called "The Banshee Chapter," directed by CMU alumnus Blair Erickson.

"My best friends are, all of them, people I knew before I was famous," Quinto said. "That's hugely important, surrounding myself with the people who hold me accountable to the person I've always been."

Quinto moved to Los Angeles after graduation, quickly securing several TV roles — a code-cracking CIA analyst on "24" and Tori Spelling's gay Iranian Muslim best friend on the VH1 sitcom "So NoTORIous." His breakthrough performance as the villainous Sylar on "Heroes" led to his first major film part, as perhaps the most iconic sci-fi character of all time. Playing Spock capitalized on one of the actor's chief assets — a breathtaking pair of eyebrows.

Last fall, after shooting "Margin Call," Quinto made his first New York stage appearance as a man who abandons his AIDS-afflicted lover in an off-Broadway revival of Tony Kushner's "Angels in America."

Though he has spoken out on gay rights issues for years, Quinto never publicly acknowledged his own sexuality. "Boundaries and clarity about the difference between my life and my public persona, my work as an actor ... is very important to me," he said in an interview just two weeks ago.

But in a follow-up email this week, he said of his decision to come out: "This decision was made with a tremendous amount of thought and introspection — in my own time, on my own terms and with my own words. I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the scores of men and women who have preceded me to this action — both within the industry and in more intimate personal journeys throughout the world. Momentum builds in waves — and I am so grateful to be riding this wave of equality with more openness and integrity than I was ever able to embrace before making this declaration."

Beginning next week, Quinto will appear in F/X's "American Horror Story," in January he'll begin shooting the "Star Trek" sequel and he's trying to get another play in the works in New York. A long hoped-for project — as composer George Gershwin — has been put on a back burner by its busy director, Steven Spielberg.

"There was a time when celebrity was associated with people who were actually good at something," Quinto said, reflecting on Gershwin. "I'm trying to hold on to that, to not believe I need to feed some machine of pop culture or insatiable tabloid journalism in order to prove my value or define myself as an artist."

[email protected]

[Luvlylittlewing]

Cynical in what way?

Where does your brother live? To me, thinking that all actors are gay is sort of the equivalent of thinking that no actors are gay.

Where does your brother live?

In Sacramento, but he has lived all over the State during his life.

To me, thinking that all actors are gay is sort of the equivalent of thinking that no actors are gay.

Possibly.  But personally, I think most actors are gay. 

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

He's so brainy. (You know which one.)

 

[serious crayons]

personally, I think most actors are gay. 

What makes you think that? 

 

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2011/10/31/111031crci_cinema_denby


The Current Cinema
All That Glitters
“Margin Call”
by David Denby
October 31, 2011


Kevin Spacey, Stanley Tucci, Jeremy Irons, Simon Baker, and Demi Moore.


I n “Margin Call,” the executives working late at an imperilled investment firm in Manhattan stand in an office tower and stare at the lights and the streets below, wondering if the great city isn’t a dream. The movie is a fictionalized account of a disastrous twenty-four hours in 2008, when “financial instruments” that had seemed solid dissolved into air. The rush of panic is halted, now and then, by moments of disbelief. Earlier in the movie, two of the company’s young analysts, sitting in the back of a Lincoln Town Car, look out at the people walking by and marvel at how little they comprehend of what is about to hit them. As visual and verbal rhetoric, the awe-inspiring appearance of Manhattan at night and the moods of choking anxiety aren’t terribly fresh, but the writing and the acting in “Margin Call” are so good that we get completely caught up. When the investment guys ask if we’re aware of what’s happening, we look at them and ask the same thing. What were people like this thinking? How could men and women paid fortunes for their judgment have continued, as late as 2008, to package, repackage, and sell billions of dollars in bonds backed by subprime mortgages? Our sense of the unreality of their enterprise is far greater than their wonder at our innocence.

As the movie opens, people at the firm are being summoned to a glass-walled conference room and politely told to clear out. Among the victims is an uncomplaining risk-management executive, Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci), who, leaving with nineteen years of his life in a cardboard box, passes a flash drive to Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto), one of the young analysts. “Be careful,” he says. Staying late on the trading floor, and plugging Dale’s numbers into standard volatility models, Sullivan quickly understands: if the mortgage-backed securities currently on the company’s books, which are heavily leveraged, decline in value by an additional twenty-five per cent, the company’s losses will be greater than its total market capitalization.

“Margin Call” is one of the strongest American films of the year and easily the best Wall Street movie ever made. It’s about corporate manners—the protocols of hierarchy, the rituals of power, and, most of all, the difficulty of confronting flagrant habits of speculation with truth. That moment is avoided until it’s absolutely necessary, at which point communication among the responsible parties becomes exceptionally nasty. The young writer-director, J. C. Chandor, has made documentaries and commercials, but he’s never had a script produced before, and this is his first feature as a director. Chandor’s only obvious qualification is that his father spent forty years at Merrill Lynch, which, like Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, destroyed itself with an excess of mortgage-backed securities and finally, in 2008, subsided, at a bargain rate, into the arms of a wealthier firm. Chandor is a beginner, but, to my ears, the terse, generally understated, yet sometimes barbarously rude language feels exactly right. I would guess that he has studied David Mamet’s work, digesting the dramatic value of repetition and silence in, say, “Glengarry Glen Ross,” along with the play’s stunned outrage and the characters’ strangely displaced, almost disembodied reactions as some appalling reality swings into view.

Chandor’s prickly script attracted a talented cast. At the company, Sullivan’s findings quickly work their way upward: first, to his immediate superior, Will Emerson (Paul Bettany), a cocky, cynical, free-spending pit boss with a streak of decency; then to the longtime head of trading, Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey), a lonely man who believes that the company does some good in the world and finds himself grieving excessively over his dog, who is dying of cancer (a decent enough symbol); then to the head of risk, Sarah Robertson (Demi Moore), who warned of danger but still has to take the fall; then to their boss, Jared Cohen (Simon Baker), a severely controlled corporate snake; and then, at last, to the C.E.O., John Tuld (Jeremy Irons). Tuld sweeps in by helicopter, assembles everyone in a conference room at 2 A.M., and, with debonair flourishes, devises a desperate strategy: dump the “greatest pile of odiferous excrement in the history of capitalism” the next day; sell all of it, at discounted rates, in a few hours, before word gets around to buyers that the paper is nearly worthless. There are a few such group meetings in “Margin Call,” but most of the scenes play out with just two or three characters bullying or appeasing one another. (Is this guy my ally? Will I survive this mess?) Chandor has worked out what all these people think of one another while keeping the drama steadily moving forward—no easy job—and if there’s a false note or an overwrought scene in “Margin Call” I couldn’t find it. Chandor has just enough camera technique to do what he needs to do. In this largely indoor movie, the city looming outside is a palpable presence; the camera, quiet and relentless in moments of confrontation, tracks silently at night through the empty trading floor, a ghost invading a once healthy company.

The second half of the movie is devoted principally to the conflict between Tuld (his name a not too subtle play on that of Dick Fuld, the former head of Lehman), who thinks that investment is merely the greatest of games, and always subject to bubbles and crashes; and Sam Rogers, who hesitates to carry out Tuld’s strategy, on the plausible ground that if you peddle junk to your customers they will never buy anything from you again. Kill trust, and you kill the market, he says. But Tuld waves away his worries. The game will go on, he believes; the firm will rise again and make money. Irons is stentorian, charming, threatening. Spacey, after a long career of playing acidulous bad guys, gives a performance of surprising gentleness. As Rogers, sleepless, makes a speech to his traders in the morning, prepping them for the unsavory task ahead, Spacey’s body slumps and his facial muscles go slack. Will Rogers walk out on Tuld? In “Margin Call,” money insistently pushes its way into personal decisions; the movie is sympathetic to the executives’ plight but hard-nosed about their constant desire to elevate pay packages over principle.

No one ever says as much, but, of course, the toxic assets were assembled in the first place, and were sold well past the danger point, because the fees from doing so were high enough to extinguish caution. Until the last moment, the smugly reckless top executives don’t even comprehend the firm’s exposure; they need the fledglings, peering into computer models, to explain it to them (not an exaggeration of what happened at several firms). If Wall Street executives find themselves at a loss to understand what the protesters outside are getting at, they could do worse than watch this movie for a few clues.

[delalluvia]

Tell you what, though, your vision of mainstream America who think all movie stars except for the likes of Sly and Clint are gay -- that doesn't match my encounters with mainstream America. I know you live in Texas and I live in Minnesota, but even objectively speaking I wouldn't automatically consider "mainstream America" to be synonymous with conservatives who view "Hollywood liberals" with suspicion. Liberals are part of mainstream America, too.

Second, in my experience mainstream America (meaning, middle-class, middle-income, non-famous people with sort of regular jobs and middle-of-the-road politics) is far LESS aware of who might or might not be gay in Hollywood than you or I would be. At a family gathering with the ex-in-laws, I once brought up the idea that Tom Cruise is often rumored to be gay. Everybody else there -- all about as mainstream America as you can get -- just looked baffled. Not only did they not consider him gay, they'd never even heard that he MIGHT be. I bet if you ask my ex-in-laws to name five gay Hollywood celebrities, they'd get through Ellen DeGeneres, maybe one or two others, and then have to reach for Liberace

My mainstream America is a mix of your version of it along with upper lower class people who didn't go to college, have their own businesses or work blue collar trades, tend to be very religious (or give lip service to it) and conservative. 

Mention Tom Cruise and his rumored gayness and they, too, will look at you confused. 

They weren't aware it was a rumor, they already thought it was true.

[serious crayons]

The conservative mainstream Americans I know (who include people who didn't go to college, have their own businesses or work blue collar trades) simply don't spend much of their time thinking about whether celebrities are gay or not. Everybody is presumed straight unless they have indicated otherwise. Sounds like your friends are the other way around.

Neither view is accurate, of course. But statistically speaking, your friends are further off the mark.

[milomorris]

The conservative mainstream Americans I know (who include people who didn't go to college, have their own businesses or work blue collar trades) simply don't spend much of their time thinking about whether celebrities are gay or not. Everybody is presumed straight unless they have indicated otherwise. Sounds like your friends are the other way around.

Neither view is accurate, of course. But statistically speaking, your friends are further off the mark.

I would go further and say that mainstream American adults don't spend much of their time thinking about sexual orientation at all. Having said that, what I've noticed is that there are some areas of show business that are considered "gayer" than others. For example, dancers are assumed to be sexual minorities more often than musicians. Actors more so than singers. Jazz musicians are "cool" so they're typically near the bottom of the list, as are people who work in non-performing areas of the industry (make-up, wig, and costume designers being a notable exception).

[Monika]

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2011/10/31/111031crci_cinema_denby


The Current Cinema
All That Glitters
“Margin Call”
by David Denby
October 31, 2011


Kevin Spacey, Stanley Tucci, Jeremy Irons, Simon Baker, and Demi Moore.


I n “Margin Call,” the executives working late at an imperilled investment firm in Manhattan stand in an office tower and stare at the lights and the streets below, wondering if the great city isn’t a dream. The movie is a fictionalized account of a disastrous twenty-four hours in 2008, when “financial instruments” that had seemed solid dissolved into air. The rush of panic is halted, now and then, by moments of disbelief. Earlier in the movie, two of the company’s young analysts, sitting in the back of a Lincoln Town Car, look out at the people walking by and marvel at how little they comprehend of what is about to hit them. As visual and verbal rhetoric, the awe-inspiring appearance of Manhattan at night and the moods of choking anxiety aren’t terribly fresh, but the writing and the acting in “Margin Call” are so good that we get completely caught up. When the investment guys ask if we’re aware of what’s happening, we look at them and ask the same thing. What were people like this thinking? How could men and women paid fortunes for their judgment have continued, as late as 2008, to package, repackage, and sell billions of dollars in bonds backed by subprime mortgages? Our sense of the unreality of their enterprise is far greater than their wonder at our innocence.

As the movie opens, people at the firm are being summoned to a glass-walled conference room and politely told to clear out. Among the victims is an uncomplaining risk-management executive, Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci), who, leaving with nineteen years of his life in a cardboard box, passes a flash drive to Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto), one of the young analysts. “Be careful,” he says. Staying late on the trading floor, and plugging Dale’s numbers into standard volatility models, Sullivan quickly understands: if the mortgage-backed securities currently on the company’s books, which are heavily leveraged, decline in value by an additional twenty-five per cent, the company’s losses will be greater than its total market capitalization.

“Margin Call” is one of the strongest American films of the year and easily the best Wall Street movie ever made. It’s about corporate manners—the protocols of hierarchy, the rituals of power, and, most of all, the difficulty of confronting flagrant habits of speculation with truth. That moment is avoided until it’s absolutely necessary, at which point communication among the responsible parties becomes exceptionally nasty. The young writer-director, J. C. Chandor, has made documentaries and commercials, but he’s never had a script produced before, and this is his first feature as a director. Chandor’s only obvious qualification is that his father spent forty years at Merrill Lynch, which, like Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, destroyed itself with an excess of mortgage-backed securities and finally, in 2008, subsided, at a bargain rate, into the arms of a wealthier firm. Chandor is a beginner, but, to my ears, the terse, generally understated, yet sometimes barbarously rude language feels exactly right. I would guess that he has studied David Mamet’s work, digesting the dramatic value of repetition and silence in, say, “Glengarry Glen Ross,” along with the play’s stunned outrage and the characters’ strangely displaced, almost disembodied reactions as some appalling reality swings into view.

Chandor’s prickly script attracted a talented cast. At the company, Sullivan’s findings quickly work their way upward: first, to his immediate superior, Will Emerson (Paul Bettany), a cocky, cynical, free-spending pit boss with a streak of decency; then to the longtime head of trading, Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey), a lonely man who believes that the company does some good in the world and finds himself grieving excessively over his dog, who is dying of cancer (a decent enough symbol); then to the head of risk, Sarah Robertson (Demi Moore), who warned of danger but still has to take the fall; then to their boss, Jared Cohen (Simon Baker), a severely controlled corporate snake; and then, at last, to the C.E.O., John Tuld (Jeremy Irons). Tuld sweeps in by helicopter, assembles everyone in a conference room at 2 A.M., and, with debonair flourishes, devises a desperate strategy: dump the “greatest pile of odiferous excrement in the history of capitalism” the next day; sell all of it, at discounted rates, in a few hours, before word gets around to buyers that the paper is nearly worthless. There are a few such group meetings in “Margin Call,” but most of the scenes play out with just two or three characters bullying or appeasing one another. (Is this guy my ally? Will I survive this mess?) Chandor has worked out what all these people think of one another while keeping the drama steadily moving forward—no easy job—and if there’s a false note or an overwrought scene in “Margin Call” I couldn’t find it. Chandor has just enough camera technique to do what he needs to do. In this largely indoor movie, the city looming outside is a palpable presence; the camera, quiet and relentless in moments of confrontation, tracks silently at night through the empty trading floor, a ghost invading a once healthy company.

The second half of the movie is devoted principally to the conflict between Tuld (his name a not too subtle play on that of Dick Fuld, the former head of Lehman), who thinks that investment is merely the greatest of games, and always subject to bubbles and crashes; and Sam Rogers, who hesitates to carry out Tuld’s strategy, on the plausible ground that if you peddle junk to your customers they will never buy anything from you again. Kill trust, and you kill the market, he says. But Tuld waves away his worries. The game will go on, he believes; the firm will rise again and make money. Irons is stentorian, charming, threatening. Spacey, after a long career of playing acidulous bad guys, gives a performance of surprising gentleness. As Rogers, sleepless, makes a speech to his traders in the morning, prepping them for the unsavory task ahead, Spacey’s body slumps and his facial muscles go slack. Will Rogers walk out on Tuld? In “Margin Call,” money insistently pushes its way into personal decisions; the movie is sympathetic to the executives’ plight but hard-nosed about their constant desire to elevate pay packages over principle.

No one ever says as much, but, of course, the toxic assets were assembled in the first place, and were sold well past the danger point, because the fees from doing so were high enough to extinguish caution. Until the last moment, the smugly reckless top executives don’t even comprehend the firm’s exposure; they need the fledglings, peering into computer models, to explain it to them (not an exaggeration of what happened at several firms). If Wall Street executives find themselves at a loss to understand what the protesters outside are getting at, they could do worse than watch this movie for a few clues.

It´s not often that I get very excited about new movies, but this one sounds very interesting!

[serious crayons]

Having said that, what I've noticed is that there are some areas of show business that are considered "gayer" than others. For example, dancers are assumed to be sexual minorities more often than musicians. Actors more so than singers. Jazz musicians are "cool" so they're typically near the bottom of the list, as are people who work in non-performing areas of the industry (make-up, wig, and costume designers being a notable exception).

Clearly some professions are more proportionately gay. I would expect that to change as mainstream America gets less homophobic. My assumption is that the reason some professions have larger (or smaller) proportions of gay workers has more to do with the acceptance of gay people (or lack thereof) within that industry than because gay people are predisposed to pursue certain professions (though I suppose it's possible both are factors).

When I worked at Macy's, I sometimes joked that men practically HAD to be gay to work there. Not really, of course, but gay men outnumbered straight men. That's been the case since my mother started working in a department store 40 years ago.

In the case of Delalluvia's conservative friends, though, what seems to be happening is less a considered assessment of the relative openness of the entertainment industry to gay professionals than it is a more generalized suspicion of anything "Hollywood" that equates it with liberalism and homosexuality (and probably various other things they disapprove of).

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

But Zach Quinto doesn't seem quite B-list, either. To me, B list celebrities are those who haven't held one of the top starring roles a big-budget major studio movie, playing a beloved TV character, and didn't also star in a successful TV series. Maybe he's A-minus list.

Not for long, I think.

"Then Spock beamed in."

Wow! He's a 'Playa'--a playa with pointy ears!  

See? I told you--he is  a playa! Yay, Zach!  





http://movies.msn.com/movies/article.aspx?news=682810


Zachary Quinto producing
Hurricane Katrina romantic drama
WENN
Nov. 12, 2011, 6:41 AM EST
 



"Star Trek" actor Zachary Quinto is set to produce a romantic movie set in the aftermath of 2005's devastating Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana.

The star's production company is teaming up with Killer Films to work on "Imperial Palace," which will tell the story of a man who manages a casino used as the headquarters for relief efforts and is caught up in a love triangle with his ex-girlfriend and another man.

This is not Quinto's first time producing a big screen project -- he previously worked behind the scenes on "Margin Call," in which he starred opposite Demi Moore, Kevin Spacey and Jeremy Irons.

In a statement, Quinto says, "We're thrilled to take the momentum of 'Margin Call' and our experience working with [director] Victor [Quinaz] on his first film to move into a second feature with him. He's a truly original talent, and Imperial Palace is a perfect example of his unique, commercial voice."

[Jeff Wrangler]

I figure I'm pretty much always the last to know about celebrity "news," so I sure got a surprise from this morning's Metro newspaper. It didn't especially surprise me to learn that Zachary Quinto is "in a relationship," but it sure did come as a surprise to learn that his partner is my Lancaster County, Pa., homeboy Jonathan Groff, of Glee and Broadway.

Hot always does gravitate to hot. 

[Front-Ranger]

What a dynamite couple they make!

[southendmd]

Zach is starring in the ART's new production of Glass Menagerie with the great Cherry Jones.  I wonder if it'll go to Broadway.  The ART is on fire:  they had a huge hit with Porgy and Bess with Audra McDonald, and have just moved their revival of Pippin to Broadway. 

http://www.americanrepertorytheater.org/events/show/glass-menagerie