Nim's Island - SciFi Weekly: Interviews with Jodie Foster, Abigail Breslin

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http://www.scifi.com/sfw/interviews/sfw18694.html

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INTERVIEWS

March 31, 2008

Jodie Foster and Abigail Breslin play tour guides to Nim's Island as the novel leaps from page to screen


By Mike Szymanski


Jodie Foster doesn't think she's too funny, but after her son came home and raved about the book Nim's Island, the two-time Oscar winner fought to be in the film version of the slapstick family fantasy comedy.

The adaptation of the popular children's book by Wendy Orr follows the story of a girl named Nim (played by Abigail Breslin) who lives on an island with her father (Gerard Butler) and who disappears. She seeks the help of the reclusive author (played by Foster) who created an action hero through her writings.

At a small press conference at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., Foster, Breslin, co-directors Jennifer Flackett and Mark Levin and producer and co-screenwriter Paul Mazur each had separate interviews about the making of the film and working with the sea lions, lizards, pelicans and other animals in the fantasy adventure movie. The film opens nationwide on April 4.


Q: Jodie Foster, can you talk about what attracted you to this project? Was it the comedy aspect?

Foster: "Yeah, I've been wanting to do a comedy for a long time, actually, and Maverick was such a great experience. I really enjoyed it, and lightness is a part of life, too. You're not all just darkness. But I couldn't find anything that was good enough, and I read this script and kept banging on doors and lobbying for it. They had a different arrangement with the studio at that time, and they were not keen on me at all—understandably, because they know me for my dark dramas."

**snippage**

Q: Abigail Breslin, what was the best part of this for you?

Breslin: "Getting to work with all the animals. I have two dogs, two cats and a turtle."


Q: So sea lions and lizards and birds—that's different. So what was that like?

Breslin: It was really, really fun. They were all really nice, so it was fun. I had to train a bit. I had to do training with the animals, and I had to do training for the stunts."

**snippage**

Q: Mark Levin and Jennifer Flackett, how as directors do you have a division of labor? And how was it for you, Paula Mazur, as the producer?


Levin: "We do everything side by side, really, all the way through the process. I mean, we sit down, we write together, we sit beside each other for every conversation and by now it's become pretty amorphous, how we divide things. I might have a slightly more technical bent than Jen but, for the most part, we really just do everything together. I mean, it's kind of bizarre, the amount of time that we spend together."


Flackett: "But it's a great thing to have that partner who you can talk to at any point. And we always say the conversation never stops, much to the chagrin of our children. There's a lot of, "Can't you talk about something besides the movie?"

**snippage**