Katie Holmes is currently promoting Rare Objects, which she wrote and directed and in which she has a supporting role. She also just wrapped up working on an off-Broadway play, The Wanderers. She talked about the experience with Variety a couple of weeks ago and I really liked what she had to say about how precisely timed a stage production should be.
“When we were rehearsing, our director Barry Edelstein was like, ‘The play works at one hour and 37 minutes or one hour and 38 minutes. If you hop up to one hour and 40 minutes, then you aren’t faster than the audience. Your thoughts have to be faster than the audience’.”
As for Rare Objects, this is her third time directing and she’s been developing it since 2016. The film is based on Kathleen Tessaro’s book of the same name which is set during the Depression. Katie’s story, however, takes places in a modern day setting. The reason?
“It was to get the movie made. It’s very expensive to make a period piece. As an exercise, I decided that I’ll do a draft where it’s contemporary and see if it works. The circumstances in the period version are still topical today.”
This reminds me of what Ben Affleck said in his interview with The Hollywood Reporter last month about how much budget is wasted on movies, using an example from when he was directing Live By Night:
“The studios and the people who make the movies are increasingly separate, from different worlds. They don’t understand one another’s values, and there’s suspicion. And it creates conflict. I was on [my 2016 movie] Live by Night, and they were dressing an extra — it must have cost $700 to dress this extra in the period. Five hundred feet away from the camera. And we were waiting while they did the touch-ups. And it was just like, “Guys. This is not meaningful, but it’s taking away from the time and the resources we have to do something authentically enough that it moves the audience. They don’t care if the curls are 1930 or 1920.”
Those are the inside baseball details of filmmaking. The hairstyle on an extra you probably don’t even notice costs that much money!
Here’s Katie this morning on the talk show circuit promoting Rare Objects. And speaking of clothing details…
It’s almost a perfect outfit. Almost. These gold pants are great and the sweater is even better. I LOVE the choice to combine the casual with the flashy, especially for this time of day. Gold sequin pants at 8am work that much better at 8am when they’re paired with a grey slouchy sweater. But it’s not just any sweater – this particular sweater, with the open neck collar and the genie sleeves, is quietly luxe… and that half tuck is exactly right too.
But… um… WHYYYYY these shoes!
I asked the same question yesterday in What Else? because she seems to be way into these square toe sandals right now and, again, I get that they’re back on trend but they’re doing nothing for what would otherwise be suuuuuch a good fashion moment!