BAD EDUCATION - Potential SPOILERS

[jo]

PS:

My final screen test, I remember going and my agent going, Hey, this is going to be great because the head of the studio is going to see it. That’s why I thought I was doing it! I never thought I was getting the part. I had no idea it was going to happen.

Did it finally happen that way -- that Tom Rothman would be around? TR was the one who wanted Dougray Scott for the role
According to David Hayter, a screenwriter of the first XMen movie, it was Lauran Shuler Donner, the movie's producer ( assisted then by Kevin Feige, now Marvel Studio chief) who suggested that they get Hugh Jackman for the role to replace Dougray ( who was unable to complete his Mission Impossible filming - according to Hayter again, because of an unfortunate motorcycle accident). LSDonner saw Hugh in Oklahoma! in London way back - her instincts were right after all!

www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/x-men-screenwriter-hugh-jackmans-wolverine-casting-drama-982045

Hugh Jackman replaced Dougray Scott as Wolverine several weeks into production. What's the story there?

[Then-Fox executive] Tom Rothman really wanted Dougray Scott to play Wolverine and he was shooting Mission: Impossible 2 and Tom Cruise kept calling Byran and saying, "We just need him a little while longer, a little while longer." We were starting to shoot and Wolverine was the lead and we didn't have him. Bryan suspected something was hinky, and so he sent the costume designer down to Australia, ostensibly to get wardrobe shots, but really it was to find out what was going on. What we found out was Dougray had been in a motorcycle accident filming the climax of MI2. He was pretty messed up. It was a real shame he couldn't do it. And Hugh had been somebody who had been in the mix earlier and it was [executive producer] Lauren Shuler Donner who said, "Why don't we bring him?"

Jo

[jo]

Re the CATS offer that Hugh turned down -- it looks like I am in sync with VULTURE on this

Re CATS - did he turn down the role of RUM TUM TUGGER??!! ( Sigh!)

www.vulture.com/2020/04/hugh-jackman-cats-movie.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=feed-part

Things Hugh Jackman is no stranger to: playing a furry creature with retractable claws, singing about being a furry creature with retractable claws, ridiculous big-budget movie musicals, Tom Hooper. And yet, the Boy from Claws dodged a CGI-rendered bullet, because the bankable song-and-dance man who worked with Hooper on Les Miserables in 2012 turned down a role in Hooper’s 2019 waking codeine nightmare, Cats.

In an interview with The Daily Beast, when asked, “Did you turn down a role in Cats?” Jackman replied, “Umm … yep.” The ellipsis is palpable. The logical follow-up question, of course, was what role would Jackman have played. Jackman answered, “You know, Tom rang me early on because we did Les Mis together, and there were a couple of options there based on availability and time, and I really … yeah, I just wasn’t available at the time.” Sure, Hugh. We think Jackman could have been an excellent Rum Tum Tugger, but then we wouldn’t have been blessed with Jason Derulo’s Artful Dodger accent.

Alas, there are dreams that cannot be. As Jackman politely put it, “I’m in the theater, man, and I don’t want to be in the business of bashing people — or jumping on bandwagons. I haven’t seen it, and Tom Hooper’s one of the great filmmakers we have.” Hooper, one of the great filmmakers? That’s like saying Skimbleshanks is bad at trains.

Meet Rum Tum Tugger

[jo]

His turning down a role in CATS is getting media mileage


But it is easy to understand why he would have turned down the role -- maybe apart from misgivings about the appeal to movie audiences of a musical featuring humans as cats --

I think it was more to do with the musical not being centric on any particular role!

Oklahoma!/The Boy From Oz/Les Misérables/The Greatest Showman/ The Music Man

These are musicals that are centric on the male lead...and in CATS, it is more like a theatrical show which are mainly character portrayals ( many of them), based on the poems of Brit poet TS Eliot with no appealing storyline! Grizabella stands out in a way only because she gets to sing one of ALWebber's most enduring songs, MEMORY, which became a popular standard! Rum Tum Tugger was only one of the more interesting characters.


Jo

[jo]

JoBlo transforms his Wolverine visage to one singing and dancing as a fierce-looking musical cat! LOL!

www.joblo.com/movie-news/hugh-jackman-turned-down-a-role-in-tom-hoopers-cats

Honestly, for all the bashing which CATS receives, Jackman probably would have been great in it.

That ain't Rum Tum Tugger


Lol - Maybe Hooper and ALWebber could have created a new character -- a badass superhero cat

[jo]

Ha - are we going to get loads of mass and social media attention on "Jackman as Catman" ( doesn't sound as credible as "Catwoman" - lol)

[jo]

LOL - why not let him play all the roles - even that of Grizabella


Jo

[jo]

Film critic opinion!

[jo]

OMG - this is really taking it too far

Hope the full article would be printed ( or link provided) so people would at least know about BAD EDUCATION!

[jo]

Back to Bad Education --

That's screenwriter Mike on the left and director Cory in the middle.

Can't help but think that they must have been a little thrilled to be working with Wolverine and the Greatest Showman rolled into one


Jo

[jo]

[jo]

From Mike Makowsky's point of view --

(Newsday is a Long Island newspaper basically serving the Nassau and Suffolk counties and the borough of Queens. Roslyn is within Nassau County) --

www.newsday.com/entertainment/movies/bad-education-roslyn-schools-hugh-jackman-1.43905887

EntertainmentMovies
'Bad Education' screenwriter, a Roslyn HS grad, talks about the true-crime film

Hugh Jackman stars as former Rolsyn schools superintendent Frank Tassone in HBO's "Bad Education." Credit: HBO
By Rafer Guzmán
[e-mail]
Updated April 17, 2020 11:47 AM

When Mike Makowsky moved with his family to Roslyn from Queens as a first-grader, the first person he met there was Frank A. Tassone, the school district’s much-loved superintendent. The six-year-old newcomer couldn’t have known that Tassone was on a mission to turn Roslyn into one of the country’s best and most prestigious school districts, or that few school administrators make a point of personally assessing the reading level of every incoming student. What Makowsky remembers is reading “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” aloud to an attentive man with a notepad.

“It stands out that a public school superintendent would take the time to meet thousands of his students,” says Makowsky, now 28. “That really speaks to the function he served as an educator in our community.”

Years after that first meeting, in 2006, the affluent neighborhood of Roslyn would be reeling from a scandal that ended with Tassone and another administrator, Pamela Gluckin, sentenced to prison for their part in an embezzlement scheme that sucked $11 million from the district. As for Makowsky, he would become the screenwriter of “Bad Education,” a new HBO film starring Hugh Jackman as Tassone, Allison Janney as Gluckin and Geraldine Viswanathan as a fictionalized version of the very real student journalist who broke the story in the school’s own newspaper. Based on a New York magazine article by Robert Kolker, and filmed in and around Roslyn, “Bad Education” airs on HBO Saturday, Apr. 25, at 8 p.m.



“Bad Education” earned strong reviews when it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last September. The Hollywood Reporter called it “engagingly devious,” while Variety praised Jackman’s performance, calling it “the best work he’s ever done.” With its themes of affluence, status and college-admissions gamesmanship, the film seemed sure to find a distributor for a theatrical release, though one never materialized. With theaters across the country shuttered and would-be moviegoers stuck at home, however, HBO’s subsequent purchase of the film — for a reported $20 million — could now be called fortuitous.

Local interest in the film has been high since news of its production was announced in 2018. The school district released a statement disavowing any involvement with the production. “While the film is purportedly meant to entertain, it’s important to remember that what occurred in our school district was far from entertaining,” the statement read. “A former superintendent and several accomplices conspired to steal approximately $11.2 million meant for our children’s education. The scandal shook our community deeply.”

“I get it,” Makowsky says of the district’s posture toward his movie. He stresses that the film “bears zero reflection” on the school as it stands today, but adds that the story of Tassone remains worth telling. “I think to just try to ignore or erase it from our shared history is not the right impulse.”

Makowsky says he began working on “Bad Education” after graduating from Brown University and moving to Los Angeles to pursue a career in screenwriting. “I always thought it would be fun to write a film that took place in Long Island and reflected the perspective of my childhood,” he says. “And I always remembered the story of the Roslyn school scandal.”
Returning to his hometown in 2015, Makowsky says, he purchased a subscription to Newsday — the first newspaper to break the story — and delved into its archives. He also interviewed roughly 25 former and current teachers, faculty members and parents that had been on the PTA. “I kind of outlined the majority of the script out of my high school cafeteria,” he says. “Unbeknownst to the administration, clearly.”


What Makowsky developed was the story of a well-to-do town whose status is measured in housing prices, which in turn are driven by the ranking of its school district. As all those numbers rose under Tassone (the school district was at one point ranked sixth in the country by The Wall Street Journal), nobody seemed aware that he and Gluckin were using school money to their upscale lifestyles. In the film, Janney’s Gluckin finances a home renovation on the school’s dime; in Kolker’s article, Tassone allegedly billed the school for trips on the Concorde, $1,800-per-night hotel rooms and thousands of dollars in dry cleaning.


Gluckin pled guilty to first-degree grand larceny in September 2006 and served nearly five years in prison. Tassone also pled guilty, to first- and second-degree larceny, and was sentenced to 4 to 12 years in prison in 2006. He was released eight months early, in February 2010. Remarkably, he still receives a state pension of more than $173,000 per year.
And yet, “Bad Education” includes scenes of Jackman’s Tassone studying late at night to memorize the names of his students and parents, taking the time to help a distraught mother with a learning-challenged son and — ironically — pushing that student reporter to dive deep into her story on the school budget. (As a side note, the scenes at her house were filmed at Makowsky’s childhood home in Roslyn.) By all accounts, Makowsky says, Tassone was a dedicated educator.


“That’s one thing the film really wrestles with: How can you be two things at once?” Makowsky says. In fact, the screenwriter credits Tassone for building Roslyn into the kind of school that nurtured his own creativity and helped usher him into an Ivy League education. “The best education I ever got was at Roslyn,” Makowsky says. “Which is why it’s kind of funny that the movie’s called ‘Bad Education.’”

[jo]

Another trailer --

[hughmanity]

A "Frank" character clip

[jo]

Mostly about BAD EDUCATION, but a sprinkling of The Music Man, and Life in Quarantine


Do listen to the PODCAST - there are more insights on himself, including what drives him as an actor, how the whole Broadway closedown is so "devastating", how he made it a point to keep life in quarantine as simple as possible, a little update on Laughing Man, what he thought of the Tassone character, etc. His part of the podcast lasts about 22 minutes.

variety.com/2020/legit/podcasts/hugh-jackman-talks-bad-education-covid-19-quarantine-music-man-hbo-1234585294/

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Apr 22, 2020 6:59am PT

Listen: Hugh Jackman Talks ‘Bad Education,’ Quarantine and ‘The Music Man’ Revival

By Marc Malkin


As the coronavirus pandemic continues to paralyze New York City, the future of Broadway remains unknown.
The Broadway League announced earlier this month that theaters would remain closed at least through June 7.
If they stick with that date, it looks like the producers of the upcoming revival of “The Music Man” plan to start rehearsals three weeks later.



“I speak with [producer] Scott Rudin every other day and we’re due to start rehearsals on June 29 and that hasn’t changed,” Hugh Jackman, who is set to star in the production with Sutton Foster, says on Wednesday’s episode of the Variety and iHeart podcast “The Big Ticket.” “Our first preview is September 15. But of course, we’ll have to see what happens. But at present, that’s still the plan.”

Jackman, who has won two Tonys and hosted Broadway’s biggest night four times, notes that 16 productions were supposed to open in time for 2020 Tony eligibility before COVID-19. The Tonys have been officially postponed with no word yet on whether they’ll be cancelled altogether or presented in some other way.


“What most people don’t understand is that it probably [takes] seven years to get to their first preview,” Jackman says. “I know what it takes to get a musical up and running and going, the amount of work that goes into it. It’s just devastating.”



Jackman and his wife Deborra-Lee Furness and their kids are following stay-at-home orders at their apartment in New York City. They’re doing jigsaw puzzles and spending a lot of time in the kitchen. Jackman boasts that he made low-carb bread. “[It] sounds really bad, right? It sounds like what’s the point?” he says. “And I have tried it a couple of times when I’ve been on Wolverine diets…but I had someone in my house who’s like, ‘I’m trying to eat less carbs.’ I’m like, okay, let’s have a look. And I found this thing and it was actually yummy.”



Jackman is also promoting his latest film, “Bad Education.” Based on true events, the HBO movie tells the story of students at a high school newspaper on Long Island who uncovered that their district superintendent Frank Tassone (Jackman) and members of his staff were embezzling millions from the school system.

Tassone was convicted for stealing $11 million from the Roslyn school district. He was sentenced to four to 12 years in prison, but was released in 2010 after spending just three years behind bars.

How he got away with such a massive scam may trace back to Tassone’s reputation. He was a beloved figure in the community, helping the high school become one of the best rated schools in the country. While he may have secretly been spending on things like $30,000 a year on dry cleaning, he also took care of his staff by showering them with gifts, including weekend getaways and lobster lunches.


“Many of the programs that he started there at Roslyn are now staples across the country,” Jackman says. “He’s also someone who lost his way through success. And hey, I’m in Hollywood, I see that all the time. Success is something that can really accelerate the flaws that are within people. And what Frank had and this is something that most of us can relate to, is his idea of needing to be perfect on the outside in appearances… He was just underneath the water treading as fast as he could and obviously in the end he couldn’t tread any longer.”


Allison Janney co-stars as Tassone’s second-in-command Pam Gluckin. In one memorable scene, Tassone and Gluckin eat lunch together on the bleachers. Director Corey Finley told them to vamp and not worry about the script too much. “We just started to play and have fun and Cory just would never cut because we just kept on going,” Jackman recalls. “I just lost it. Some of the laughs in there are actually me laughing. It was just too much fun.”



Listen to the full interview with Jackman below. You can also find “The Big Ticket” at iHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Check out the podcast from the link at the bottom of the article.

[jo]

The irony of the movie made for the big screen now being lauded for its small-screen release!

Sign of the times!


variety.com/2020/tv/features/hbo-hugh-jackman-bad-education-1234586641/

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Apr 22, 2020 11:00am PT
Inside ‘Bad Education,’ Hugh Jackman’s New Scandal-Inspired HBO Movie

By Kate Aurthur

Maarten de Boer for Variety


When “Bad Education” premiered to a packed theater at the Toronto Intl. Film Festival in September, it drew enthusiastic reviews, and raves for star Hugh Jackman — Variety chief film critic Peter Debruge wrote of Jackman’s performance, “‘Bad Education’ is the best work he’s ever done.” Awards talk began immediately.

Directed by Cory Finley (“Thoroughbreds”) and written by Mike Makowsky (“I Think We’re Alone Now”), “Bad Education” — based on the real-life downfall of Frank Tassone, a Roslyn, Long Island, school district superintendent played by Jackman — was seen as the most commercial film for sale at Toronto. And indeed, the movie commanded a blockbuster price tag, selling to HBO for close to $20 million shortly after the festival’s close in mid-September.


That the film sold to HBO instead of to a theatrical distributor was seen as a surprise, but also as a sign of the times: Mid-budget films aimed at adults have all but disappeared from movie theaters, and big festival sales of indies have rarely paid off in recent years.




For “Bad Education,” the HBO deal also meant that Jackman — as well as supporting cast standout Allison Janney — would be vying for an Emmy nomination rather than an Oscar. “I have only done theatrical releases, thank goodness, since ‘X-Men,’” Jackman says. “So I was a little taken aback at first. But then I was like, ‘Oh, I actually think a lot more people will see this in this format.’”


Jackman is not alone in that realization. According to Casey Bloys, HBO’s president of programming, the stark realities of the box office, along with the rise of streaming services, have in recent years made “filmmakers much more willing to forgo a theatrical release, and give up an Oscar run to go for Emmys.”


HBO makes fewer films than it once did, but for decades the company produced movies based on true stories, including 1993’s “The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom” (starring Holly Hunter, who won an Emmy for it) and Jay Roach’s electoral double feature, 2008’s “Recount” and 2012’s “Game Change” — among many others. To Bloys, the story and execution of “Bad Education” is “in the tradition of what we have done.”


“We’re not giving up making our own films, and we still are developing them,” he continues. “But this is an interesting avenue, because for about what we would spend to make a film, you can pick one up and know how it’s been received.”

Allison Janney (top) plays a school administrator who servesas an accomplice to Hugh Jackman’s Frank Tassone in “Bad Education”
Courtesy of HBO

What no one could have foreseen is that “Bad Education,” which will make its debut on April 25, would premiere during a time when COVID-19 has shuttered theaters and forced people into self-quarantine. That televised entertainment provides much-needed comfort has gratified the “Bad Education” filmmakers and cast.


“It’s hard to think about anything other than the virus right now, of course,” says director Finley. “I’m just glad that we are coming out on small screens, and that people will be able to watch this at home and stay safe. And that we can hopefully be something new for people to enjoy in a time where there’s not a lot to get excited about.”


Jackman expresses a similar sentiment. “I’m at home with my family, and we’re trying to watch really good material,” he says. “I’m trying to read really good books, and listen to good music, and in that way, it’s something I think as actors and artists, we can contribute.”



When screenwriter Mike Makowsky moved to the Roslyn School District as a first grader in 1997, Frank Tassone was the first person he met. Tassone would personally evaluate the reading level of every incoming student. “Pretty atypical for a public school superintendent to make that kind of investment in the students,” Makowsky says.

Tassone’s eventual arrest took place in 2004, when Makowsky was in seventh grade. To detail what exactly he was arrested for would be to spoil the surprises of “Bad Education.” Suffice it to say, his fall had a little bit of everything, including financial malfeasance, the exposure of Tassone’s secret gay life and a supporting cast that included an accomplice (Pam Gluckin, the school administrator later played by Janney) and enablers on the Roslyn school board — who looked the other way because it suited the school’s top ranking and the town’s high property values.

After college, Makowsky moved to Los Angeles and became a screenwriter. He’d written and produced a few indie films, but in 2016 he wanted to try his hand at writing a movie based on a true story — and also wanted to set something on Long Island (a “very specific kind of upbringing,” Makowsky says). Soon enough, he thought of the story of Tassone, and optioned Robert Kolker’s 2004 New York magazine article about the scandal. To write the spec script, Makowsky went home to Roslyn to do research, interviewing everyone who remembered what had happened — from teachers to custodians, as well as parents who’d been involved in the PTA. “I essentially outlined the entire script in my high school cafeteria,” Makowsky says.




Later that year, with the production company Automatik attached to it, “Bad Education” appeared on The Black List as one of 2016’s most promising screenplays. Makowsky and Automatik’s Fred Berger knew the film needed a director who understood its mix of genres: It was a satiric tragedy with true-crime elements. They sent the script to Finley, whose film debut, “Thoroughbreds,” a darkly stylish teen thriller with a comedic edge, had premiered at Sundance in 2017 and sold to Focus Features. He signed on in late 2017. “I liked that Mike’s script had a really unique tone, sort of tiptoeing between comedy and something much more dramatic,” Finley says. With Finley on board, Automatik was able to get Sight Unseen to finance the film.


The “Bad Education” team next had to find its Frank, a character who is a devoted educator and charismatic leader — and also a larcenous man with a double life. Jackman, who has so often played heroes, read it, and remembers wondering about its inflections: “This is gonna be tricky. Because I couldn’t quite work out the tone from reading the script — it felt like three genres in one.” He decided to watch “Thoroughbreds,” and after 20 minutes, Jackman says, “I was like, ‘I’m doing this film.’”


Jackman on the set with director Cory Finley and writer Mike Makowsky.
Courtesy of HBO


With Jackman committed, Finley worked with casting director Ellen Lewis, who casts Martin Scorsese’s movies. “She has such a skill at building out ensembles that all feel like they’re in the same film together, and really give you a sense of place,” Finley says.

Janney, fresh off her supporting actress Oscar for “I, Tonya,” read the script, met with Finley and then heard Jackman was doing it. “I’ve been a huge fan of his forever, and he’s exactly the kind of actor I want to be working with,” Janney says. Ray Romano joined the cast as president of the school board, who’s willfully blinded by Frank’s accomplishments. Geraldine Viswanathan signed on to play the key role of Rachel, a reporter for the school paper who gets so fired up by a pep talk Frank gives her about journalism that she begins the investigation that ends up bringing him down. (That the school paper did break part of the Tassone story is, Makowsky says, an “absurd, crazy truth” — but it’s exaggerated for effect in “Bad Education,” and the character of Rachel is a composite. “It was very helpful to have an audience surrogate through whose eyes we could see the breadth of the scandal in real time,” Makowsky says.)


Janney set about creating Pam’s accent by working with a dialect coach, and also by remembering childhood summers spent with her grandparents in Cedarhurst on Long Island. “I just remember as a little girl falling in love with the accent, thinking it was so classy,” Janney says, affecting it for emphasis.


According to Jackman, the role of Frank is “different from what I’ve done,” and he researched the real story to create a character who was mendacious yet sympathetic. “Somehow, the lie built on itself — that’s fascinating to me. I don’t think people go around going, ‘I’m the villain of this life!’” Jackman says. That Frank was also in the closet, he says, added “another layer to his deception.”



Jackman was also aware that he was playing against his own self-image. “If I have any kind of objectivity about how people see me as a human being, I think they probably think I’m a nice guy,” he says. “I thought that would be powerful for the story as well.”


Under normal circumstances, HBO would conduct an Emmy campaign around Jackman, Janney and “Bad Education” as a whole. But because of the coronavirus pandemic, nothing is normal these days — which HBO’s Bloys certainly takes into account. “I don’t know that I have the right answer, nor do I think anybody does,” he says. “But obviously, you want work to be recognized. The industry has to figure out what’s the right way forward.”

Janney wishes the cast and filmmakers could have celebrated the U.S. premiere of the movie at the Tribeca Film Festival, which was, of course, canceled. “It’s a really great movie, and I’m proud of it,” she says. But she adds her voice to the chorus of those hoping audiences can find solace and distraction in seeing the film.


“They watched ‘Tiger King’!” Janney says with a laugh. “Now they can watch ‘Bad Education.’”

One other thing I have observed -- this movie intended for TV viewing is getting so much media mileage. Why? Because the trade paper community and the film blog sites do not have much to write about ( no releases, uncertainty as to immediate future) for one thing! Plus the movie got so much praise from Toronto for another...and is now poised to be an HBO original programming gem! What is also not so obvious to people was that this movie was originally intended to help launch HBO-MAX ( recently announced to open on May 27) but was moved to HBO! HBO being the perennial winner of EMMYs for the quality of its programming. It seems they did see the strong chances of BAD EDUCATION to be their prestige original movie - so it was transferred to the prestige-famous TV network!

Hope those EMMY chances do come true - but we have to wait a while before the nominations are announced in the summer and for the awards ceremony in late summer or early fall!

Jo

[jo]

A little insight on Hugh co-star Geraldine Viswanathan --

www.instyle.com/news/geraldine-viswanathan-bad-education-interview?utm_campaign=instyle_instyle&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link&utm_term=3166F12C-84DE-11EA-9575-02F839982C1E

Excerpts --

You've worked with so many huge names in this industry already, in Bad Education, but also in Miracle Workers and Blockers and so on ... Has anyone acted as a mentor of sorts?

During production, I feel like everyone becomes really close and sometimes you feel like you're being given little nuggets of wisdom. But no, no one's really taken my request to be my mentor. I guess Hugh [Jackman] was really great for me to work with and get to know in that way just because, I mean, his wife [Deborra-Lee Furness] has family in my hometown. I just kind of felt like I already knew him. I was so nervous to meet him. And then as soon as we met, I felt very at home with him. I think it is probably because we're Australian and there's that kind of camaraderie in that. He was really wonderful in making me feel comfortable and confident. And he told me, when you're given a gift, to always open the card first. Which I thought was good advice. And then I proceeded to open his present first.


What did he get you?

He got me a book of poetry about New York. Because he lives in New York, and I was about to move there. So yeah, that was really helpful.

[jo]

More insights from Geraldine --

variety.com/2020/film/podcasts/geraldine-viswanathan-hugh-jackman-bad-education-1234586659/

Excerpts --

“I first met with [screenwriter] Mike Makowsky, and we just got on so great. … And then I read the script, and it was like the fastest I’ve ever read a script. It’s just so sharp,” Viswanathan says. “I just loved the pace of it.”

Viswanathan was introduced to Jackman at a table read. “I was very star-struck, but then he immediately put me at ease,” she says. “He’s just the friendliest and loveliest. We’re both from Australia, so it was kind of like an instant ‘Hey!’”

The Oscar nominee, who would sometimes “break out into a tap routine” between takes, also taught Viswanathan how to play backgammon. “But I definitely would have moments, especially during one of our [scenes] together, where I’d be like, ‘OK, he’s acting, and now I have to do it as well?’” she says, joking.

This was filmed sometime in 2018?

[jo]

http://instagram.com/p/B_VBAF5jZND

Keep swiping.

He's got a little paunch in 1 of the photos - trying to look like Frank T

[jo]

Presumably another video conference shared with other media outlets ? In this case, an article written for the LongIsland Weekly.

longislandweekly.com/hugh-jackman-talks-about-portrayal-of-former-roslyn-superintendent-in-hbos-new-film-bad-education/

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Hugh Jackman Talks Portrayal Of Former Roslyn Superintendent In HBO’s Bad Education


Anthony Murray
April 23, 2020

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Photos courtesy of HBO
As a child growing up, the multifaceted Hugh Jackman always had a love and passion for acting since it always felt like home to him.

“I enjoyed the camaraderie and the family of it,” Jackman said of his first years as an actor. “It was like my tribe. You know when you’re just with those people you feel like you can just be yourself? We used to put on plays outside of school and put on a play every semester because I absolutely loved it. Later, I realized I’m someone who is fascinated by humanity, their motivations, why we do things and what the world is about. I was always fascinated by history, too. I graduated as a journalism major from college, which is around storytelling, understanding human nature and trying to get to the truth. So I think all those things contributed to becoming an actor.”

That love and passion has led Jackman to catapult into superstardom, where he’s starred in dozens of films, including the X-Men series as Wolverine, Les Misérables and The Greatest Showman, among other timeless and countless movies. Now, Jackman is tackling his latest role as disgraced Roslyn School District Superintendent Frank Tassone in HBO’s newest film Bad Education, which was filmed on Long Island.

Inspired by true events of a rather painful time that the Roslyn School District faced in the early 2000s, Bad Education, which is written by Roslyn native Mike Makowsky and directed by Cory Finley, follows the story of Tassone and his right-hand woman Pam Gluckin, who is portrayed by actress Allison Janney, who both reigned over the Roslyn School District as it was on the verge of the nation’s top spot, spurring record-setting college admissions and soaring property values. However, when a multi-million dollar embezzlement scheme surfaces that threatens to destroy all that they’ve built, Tassone is forced to maintain order and secrecy by whatever means necessary. The darkly comical film highlights the deficiencies of the public education system in the U.S. while examining the broader forces that foster greed, corruption and lack of accountability in our institutions.


Unaware of the prior events that unfolded in Roslyn, Jackman was drawn to the script just by its shocking and surprising story.

“I read the script and I said, ‘Oh, this is an amazing story,’” Jackman said. “I had no idea this happened. The script itself, I couldn’t work out from reading it what genre or tone it was whether it had a Coen brothers feel or if it was more of a thriller. It felt like it straddled different worlds and sometimes, I felt that it was difficult to pull off. My agent sent me Cory Finley’s first film, Thoroughbreds, and I was 20 minutes into watching it and I was like, ‘I’m doing this movie’ because that is exactly what he achieved in Thoroughbreds. So it was a mixture of the story, the character and then ultimately I think Corey as a director [that drew me to the film].”


Once signing on to do the film, Jackman said he did mountains of research to learn all he could about Tasssone and the scandal that rocked Roslyn to its core.

“I didn’t speak to Frank himself, but I hired a researcher and there’s a lot on the public record,” Jackman said. “There was lots of video and the writer Mike Makowsky is also from the school. So we had a lot of information and a lot to go on. I did loads and loads of research and then, basically from there, I had a dialect coach. We did a lot of work on costumes and fat suits. We rehearsed quite a lot, which is great and went from there.”


So how would Jackman describe Tassone, who led quite a surprising double life outside of school?

“Teachers have to know who they’re teaching, know how to get stuff across and how to get their students’ trust and confidence,” Jackman said. “So he started as a teacher and he genuinely had that altruistic wonderful sense of teaching to begin with of making education better for kids all over the country. He had a doctorate from Columbia and was a very smart man. He understood the system and he managed to get Roslyn to number four in the country. I think he was the highest paid superintendent in the country and he was highly sought after. He started many programs, which by are now standard across the country.


“He was a gifted educator. I don’t think he ever saw himself as a Machiavellian master manipulator trying to get out of what he wanted. He really thought of himself as the best. That was what fascinates me about this story is that he gradually made himself believe it was OK for him to do the things he did. When he was sentenced they said he stole $2.2 million. He very defensively said, ‘I did not. I stole $1.1 million.’ He thought that was vindication. The other million he was spending on teachers and valuing them. He justified everything. What the movie did is show how that was possible. How do ‘good people’ and upstanding public servants go this far off track? It all started with a Greek salad and a soda with a colleague at a local restaurant. That’s what fascinated me.”


Realizing that the film will drudge up difficult feelings once again for the people of Roslyn who experienced the scandal firsthand, Jackman said it is still an important story to tell.

“I feel like a sense of responsibility for every character that I play,” Jackman said. “It’s a painful period in Roslyn’s history. I think it’s a cautionary tale. I still think it’s worth telling, but I know that it’s going to be painful for people who went through it to have this all brought back up again and have their school name brought up again 15 years later when things have been forgotten. I understand for certain people and that’s why I do mountains of research to make sure that what we’re doing is accurate and then also why we’re doing it is important. It’s not just to titillate, entertain or throw mud at certain people. It’s about understanding human nature and making sure this stuff doesn’t happen again.”



Also starring in the film alongside Jackman and Janney is actor and comedian Ray Romano, who portrays school board president Bob Spicer.

“Both of them I love and they’re so down to earth,” Jackman said. “I remember sitting outside our trailer that I shared with Ray, and we were sitting on the step and we’re in a parking lot in Levittown and across the parking lot, which was deserted, was a gas station and a comedy place in the most random position in the middle of nowhere. Ray is like, ‘I used to play there every week.’ Allison and I both came from theater, so we kind of have that in common and the camaraderie amongst all people in the theater.”


Jackman said there is an important story to be told within this film that dives deeper into truth and understanding.
“The character that was played by Geraldine [Viswanathan], Rachel Bhargava, showed that corruption or lack of truth can actually be spotted by anyone,” Jackman explained. “It takes a lot of courage for a young person to take on those authority figures like teachers, superintendents and a school board. She instinctively knew that there was something wrong. None of us are actually above slipping from the truth. We’re not all going to end up stealing $12 million, but all of us on some level can find ourselves pretending that things will be OK because it suits us personally. That’s what this cautionary tale is about.”

Jackman is also quite charitable, being involved in numerous types of nonprofit organizations that help people around the world.

“We have the Laughing Man Foundation, which is part of the coffee company that we have as a family,” Jackman said. “We give all our profits back to the farmers. We do a lot of work with the Actor’s Fund, my wife has two organizations Adopt Change and Hopeland, which is basically centered around kids. I’m an ambassador for World Vision and the Fight Cancer Foundation, so I’m lucky enough to work with a number of organizations.”



So what else does Jackman have planned for the rest of the year?



“The only thing that I have planned is The Music Man [on Broadway],” he said. “We are currently due to start rehearsals on June 29. The first previews are September 15, but of course we’ll have to see how things shake out. I’m not doing anything before then, so I’ll be back on Broadway when everyone is ready.”


Bad Education premieres on Saturday, April 25, at 8 p.m. ET on HBO. The film will also be available on HBO On Demand, HBO NOW, HBO GO and partners’ streaming platforms.

[jo]

http://instagram.com/p/B_VAoboJncr

[jo]

An interview with Allison Janney --

www.etonline.com/allison-janney-reveals-the-bad-education-scene-with-hugh-jackman-that-made-her-say-oh-sht-exclusive

As an Oscar and seven-time Emmy winner as well as being a longtime staple on TV, it’s hard to imagine Allison Janney getting rattled on set. But the actress tells ET the she was terrified when she had to shoot her first scene of the HBO film Bad Education with co-star Hugh Jackman.


“I’m such a huge Hugh Jackman fan and I’ve never worked with him before. And I’m thinking, ‘Oh, sh*t,’” Janney says of their first interaction as co-stars, when Janney had to feed a sandwich to the former X-Men.


“He was incredibly playful and there in the moment with me, which gave me the confidence to be playful and insert a kind of intimacy between them, you know, teasing him with the sandwich,” the actress continues. “Sometimes I would really try to shove the sandwich in his mouth. He was open to me doing whatever I wanted to do.” (Watch the moment in the video above.)

In Janney’s defense, the scene sets up the relationship between real-life superintendents Pam Gluckin and Frank Tassone, who had a complicated personal and professional relationship thanks to their ongoing multi-million dollar embezzlement scheme they pulled over on their Long Island, New York, school district.



Written by Mike Makowsky, Bad Education recounts the scandal that rocked the picturesque town of Roslyn where Tassone and Gluckin’s siphoning of school funds was eventually uncovered by student reporters for the high school newspaper, The Beacon. The darkly funny movie examines how someone like Tassone, a beloved school official with champagne tastes, managed to lead a double life bolstered by the millions he stole.

Once their scheme started to fall apart, it was revealed that Tassone, who purported a life as widower, was living with a longtime partner in Manhattan and dated another man living in Las Vegas. He indulged in a lavish lifestyle that included first-class flights, gambling trips, plastic surgery and expensive suits.

Meanwhile, Gluckin used school funds to pad her bank account while paying off credit card bills and remodeling her Hamptons summer house. She also used the money to buy jet skis and artwork. In total, she and Tassone were accused of stealing over $11 million from school district funds.


Unaware of the real-life events until she was sent Makowsky’s script, Janney was blown away by everything that unfolded. “I was just shocked that this had actually happened,” she says, wondering how these Tassone and Gluckin could be so brazen.
“As an actress, I love characters like this that are so morally conflicted,” Janney says, becoming fascinated with trying to understand the why and how of everything that motivated them to steal as much as they did. On top of that, Janney also tried to make sense of Gluckin and Tassone’s relationship. “I think they thought they were friends. I think Pam probably had a crush on him like every other woman in there,” she muses.

But when the cracks in their scheme are exposed, Tassone throws Gluckin under the bus in order to protect himself. “She was overwhelmed, feeling betrayed, but then hoping against hope that he is going to fix it and make it OK,” Janney says of the scene when Gluckin gets caught and Tassone forces her to step down from the school board. It’s a moment when she realizes they’re not friends; they’re not in this together.

That confrontation, which takes place halfway through the film, mirrors their opening scene together. This time, instead of Gluckin feeding Tassone something he doesn’t want, Tassone’s now feeding her a bunch of B.S. to save himself. “It was a chilling moment for me to play with him,” Janney says of acting with Jackman.


It’s also a chilling moment to watch since Janney and Jackman are so good at playing off each other. “We had good chemistry,” she says, before praising his generous attitude that extended from their first day together on set. “He was right there with me. It was a great moment in my career to get to work with him.”



Bad Education premieres Saturday, April 25 at 8 p.m. ET on HBO.

[jo]

[jo]

Entire interview under " Multi-topic Interview" -- will only cover the parts pertaining to BAD EDUCATION.

Apr 24, 2020 11:16:04 GMT -5 jo said:

Great and very informative interview covering  --

*Bad Education
*Reminiscence - in detail
*The Music Man - more detailed than in TV interviews

*Working with directors
*Wish list director to work with
*Life in quarantine

Collider has written very interesting interviews with Hugh over the years.


collider.com/hugh-jackman-interview-bad-education-the-music-man-reminiscence/


Will break this up into separate topics for easier reading --

Hugh Jackman on HBO’s ‘Bad Teacher’, Quarantine Breadmaking Tips, and Quentin Tarantino
by Christina Radish April 24, 2020

Directed by Cory Finley and inspired by a wild real-life story, the darkly comic HBO Films original production Bad Education tells the unbelievable tale of the largest embezzlement scheme in American public school history. When charismatic superintendent Frank Tassone (superbly brought to life by Hugh Jackman), part passionate educator and part expert manipulator, is discovered to have stolen millions from the Roslyn school district in New York in 2004, his secret life is brought to light, exposing a level of greed, corruption and lack of accountability that would be hard to believe, if it weren’t all true.

During this 1-on-1 phone interview with Collider, Aussie actor Hugh Jackman talked about what a delicious role this was to play, the biggest challenges in embodying this character, the many layers of Frank Tassone, the joy of working with this cast (including Allison Janney, Ray Romano and Geraldine Viswanathan), his approach for playing real-life people, and why he believes doing your homework and putting in the work is important. He also talked about why he wanted to be a part of the sci-fi romantic thriller Reminiscence from writer/director Lisa Joy (Westworld), the genre he’d love to do, whether he’s thought about directing, what he thinks it will take to get folks back in theaters, and rehearsing at home for The Music Man.


Collider: This is a wild story, and you’re just so damn good in this movie.

JACKMAN: Aw, thank you so much. I appreciate that.


How much fun was this role to play? It seems like one of those characters that’s just so delicious to play, as an actor.

JACKMAN: So delicious because it hits so many layers and facets. He’s a really smart, slick guy, who is under the biggest pressure of his life. With that feeling of everything is slipping away, he’s desperately trying to be calm on the surface. As an actor, it just had so much to play with, and so many things that I’ve never really had the opportunity to play with. He’s seemingly very charming, but also just a viper. When he’s up against the wall, he’ll go for the jugular. Those things, I just found really exciting to play. And of course, with a great cast, it was just a joy.

It’s a story with a flashy headline because it’s the largest embezzlement scandal in American public school history, and yet when I watched this, I hadn’t known anything about it, but at the same time, I couldn’t stop watching it, to see where it was all going.
 
JACKMAN: I’m so glad. I’m from Australia, so I had no idea about it, either. I also didn’t really understand how the school system works, which seems really amazing to me, from an outsider’s point of view, with the whole passing budgets every year, and all of that stuff. It was fascinating to me. When I was reading it, I was like, “I’m not sure what the tone is here. At times, it’s like a Coen brothers film. At times, it’s like a thriller. It’s this true life crime story of waste. Where is this going?” And then, when I watched Cory Finley’s movie Thoroughbreds, I was like, “Oh, yeah, he can handle more than one or one genre, at a time.” What’s astonishing to me is that, at the center of this story, is a 15-year-old girl who, in truth, is an amalgamation of two people, in real life, but it was all true that the school newspaper broke the story. That just made it even more astonishing.

I love that this is presented as a dark comedy. As we learn about the story, it just gets more and more insane, so it seems like there would be no other way to tell the story. How do you think the tone of the film and the telling of this story really works to its advantage, in that way?


JACKMAN: Well, Cory just has a wonderful way, as he worked on the script and also in the making the film, to keep you entertained. In the same way that the true-life story just slipped into being the greatest theft of all time, and all of these really nice people who had dedicated their life just gradually slipped, you start this story feeling that this is quite fun and entertaining and interesting. And then, it starts to slide, and the comedy starts to get blacker and blacker, and they go deeper and deeper and deeper. In a way, the tone of the movie allows you to slip into the enormity of the story along with it, rather than it being a too heavy a tone, up top.


Because there are so many layers to a character like this, that’s the fun of playing a character like this, but it also seems like the tremendous challenge of playing a character like this. What were the biggest challenges, for you?

JACKMAN: I think the biggest challenges were being able to watch him in real time, manipulate events in his favor. When everything seemingly is crashing, he used his charm and smarts to win. I think that, as well as regulating between his genuine desire to help people, but when push comes to shove, he will destroy anyone who gets in his way, and why that happens and how that happens was the biggest challenge. Of course, there were many, many fun layers. The things he’s hiding, as the film goes on, get bigger and bigger, and as an actor, you want nothing more than for something to be going on, on the surface, and something completely different underneath. That kind of conflict is really what you look for, as an actor, and Frank head it in spades.


Do you feel like he just thought he would charm his way out, no matter what? Do you think that he really thought he would just keep getting away with this?

JACKMAN: Yes, I think he thought he was gonna get away with it. What’s even more interesting to me is that, as the years went by, he justified that he was still doing the right thing because he was getting 70 pats on the back. He was, by this point, the highest paid superintendent in the country, I believe. He wrote an editorial for the newspaper, every second week. He was getting the rotary’s Man of the Year. I think he felt like he deserved it, and rationalized that everything he was taking was a pittance of what he would get, if he went into the private sector. So, what starts with a Greek salad and a soda at lunch with a couple of other teachers, gradually, over time, became okay somehow. That’s what fascinates me. How people can pretend that things are okay because it suits them. It’s that slipperiness of truth before, all of a sudden, you’re in jail for six years because you’ve taken $10 million.


He seems like a guy that you could just endlessly study because there’s just so much there.

JACKMAN: I agree with you. It’s a cautionary tale. The amount of people who have that power and position, and then go on to steal, is very few. But all of us human beings have a tendency that we have to guard against, of just looking out for ourselves or our family. The college bribery scandal happened while we were filming. Surely, people must feel it’s okay because they love their kid and they’re doing it for their kid. And then, later, they go, “What was I thinking?!” People generally think they’re good, that they’re doing the right thing, and they’re doing their best. Life has a funny way of standing up and slapping you around.


Along with being a role that is great fun for you to play, it also seems like it must have been great fun to work with these actors.

JACKMAN: Oh, it was just such a joy. There was so many. Obviously, there was Allison Janney and Ray Romano. There were so many great actors that everyone knows, but that cast, right down to every character in that cast, are people I’ve known from the Broadway world and theater world. They’re great New York actors, and Cory is a playwright. He’s young. He’s 31, and Thoroughbreds was actually a play that he wrote, that got picked up to film. He knew all of these actors for years, and you could just tell how much fun he was having, working with them all. The whole thing was very easy. It’s nice, after having half of my life and most of my career on big films, which I’m really happy to have, just be in a really small, nimble drama, with great scripts and great actors. It felt easy. I think we shot the film in 10 or 11 weeks, all on location. It was great.



How he was perceived and judged by people seems to be something that was so important to Frank Tassone, and your performance is so measured because of that. How did you gauge that? Was that something that just became instinctual, as you played him?


JACKMAN: I always felt that he had to feel really calm and collected, like a great superintendent and leader. He was like, “Don’t worry, I’ve got this.” He had to feel that he had everything handled. So, I want to always have that calm exterior, even more so when things go down, because he needed to project to the board and to the school that he’s got everything covered. There were always seven things going on at once, inside of his head. He had a 30-year relationship with a man that nobody knew about, and behind his back he had a relationship with a young man who used to go to the school that he taught at in Vegas, and he was buying a house. There were just so many things happening, at once. I always filled, particularly in the first half the movie, that you had to like him and feel that he was a really great educator because that was the truth, and no one saw this coming. Everybody liked him. It’s interesting, I’ve read a lot of interviews where, after, people would say, “There was always something a bit off about him. I couldn’t work out what it was. He suits were too good, and he had plastic surgery.” But I’m telling you, not one person, prior to the events, said anything. There’s nothing on the record, where anyone said anything other than great things about him. So, I always thought it was really important that people feel comfortable around him, that kids really like him, and that he encourages them, so that there was that charm, as well as, underneath, that feeling that he’s working 18 different angles.



From P.T. Barnum to Gary Hart to Frank Tassone, you’ve played some really interesting real-life men, in the last few years. Is there a different feeling or approach for you, at all, when you play real-life people? Do you research them differently?

JACKMAN: Yeah, I do a lot more research, for sure. I do quite a lot of research. For me, I just like to know the world that I’m operating in. It anchors me, as an actor, to feel that I’m doing something that could really be happening. But when you play someone real, particularly Frank, who’s alive and a tutor. He’s online right now. You can hire him for 50 bucks an hour. He’s up in the Bronx. Well, at the time of filming, he was. I’m not sure about right now. But he’s alive, and all of those people who were at the Roslyn school are still around. I hired a researcher, and we did loads and loads of research. We looked at lots of archival video types and interviews. Thankfully, there’s a huge amount on public record. But I do feel, not just for the characters, but for the audience, this is a true story and, for a lot of people, it’s all the more amazing that it’s a true story. And it’s not just the amount of money that was taken and how they did it and how things went wrong, but how the school board thought it was a good idea to not report $250,000 of stolen public money. All of those things were incredible to me, but even more incredible, to be honest, was that it was all uncovered by the school newspaper. I hope every kid in school watches this and goes, “Oh, yeah, I’m 15.” Twenty six people ended up being charged with this thing, all because of, in reality, two people, but in our story, just one.

[jo]

[jo]

Cute conversation between former co-stars Daniel Radcliffe and Geraldine Viswanathan --

www.interviewmagazine.com/culture/geraldine-viswanathan-and-daniel-radcliffe-on-eternal-youth-and-penis-removal

Excerpts --

RADCLIFFE : What was it like working with Hugh Jackman and Allison Janney?
VISWANATHAN: Just amazing. They’re so lovely.

RADCLIFFE: Good. You’d break my heart if you told me anything else but that.

VISWANATHAN: Have you not met those guys?

RADCLIFFE: I’ve met Hugh a couple times, and he’s always been really nice. My mom briefly stalked Hugh Jackman around the West Village.

VISWANATHAN: [Laughs.] Naturally.

RADCLIFFE: He used to walk his dog around here, and I’m pretty sure that whatever my mom’s dogwalking route had been, she would be like, “Oh, I see Hugh’s going there. I’m just going to walk my dog near him today.” When I met him, I casually apologized for that.