There are Rendition previews in abundance for Wednesday and Thursday this week. I'm fortunate enough to be attending one on Thursday thanks to The Guardian. As reported in Variety, the audience who were lucky enough to attend one preview that took place last Thursday at Hollywood's Arclight Theater enjoyed a Q&A session with Gavin Hood, Kelley Sane and Omar Metwally. Omar is superb in Rendition and he is well aware that he has much to thank his director for: 'In terms of the intensity of the scenes, I had a great director and I had a very safe environment... Gavin was an actor for years and really knows how to make us feel like we can give our best so I give him a lot of thanks for creating an environment where I can try to do that.'
Jake has commented that Gavin's South African heritage and his memories of Apartheid gave him a unique perspective for a film about rendition. As Gavin says: 'I come from a country that threw out all the rules... There was detention without trial and it was a time when we looked to the American Constitution as an extraordinary document that we felt we needed, and perhaps that's why I feel somewhat overly passionate about the debate.'
Gavin expands on this in a phone interview he gave with Filmmaker South Africa. He also points out that fear for the security of his cast and crew 'was one of the reasons we didn't name a specific country... El-Ibrahimi has no idea where he's been taken. Maybe the audience shouldn't either.'
How topical Rendition is becomes painfully clear when one sees that Amnesty International has chosen to coincide with Rendition's release its declaration that many prisoners in the War on Terror are still missing and its announcement of a new campaign. Isn't this just what Jake, Reese, Gavin, Kelley and everyone else involved in this project would wish?
'Amnesty International UK Director Kate Allen said: 'Jake Gyllenhaal and Reese Witherspoon's film is extremely timely as prisoners are still missing after being subject to 'rendition' - basically another word for kidnapping and secret detention... Anyone who goes to see this powerful film and comes out of a cinema believing that kidnap and secret detention are wrong can do something about it - they can support our new 'Unsubscribe' campaign to stop human rights abuses in the 'war on terror'.'
And then there's the beard
Leave it to Fox's Pop Tarts to get to the heart of what Rendition is all about - Jake's beard. In this video interview on the LA 'red carpet' (if you can hear Jake and Reese above the noise of the traffic driving past unaware of this 'premiere'), one of the girls tells Jake: '"I wouldn’t recognize you in the street, you look different all the time,” we told the “Brokeback" boy. “Is that a good thing?” he asked. Of course we assured him it was — and that “change was as good as a holiday." “Wow, that’s amazing," Jake responded. "I like that — I’m going to use it in the next interview!”
Jake also says in this interview that Rendition works because it has three qualities: it's an important subject, it's got drama and its current. Oh yes, and Jake doesn't have a beard in it.
Includes pictures from IHJ.
