For those unfamiliar with the majestic Oh Don Piano: It’s a term that refers to actors or directors making BS non-statements in regards to their future projects. The basics of it are this:
Q: Would you make a billion dollar movie with Steven Spielberg?
A: If the script was good!
See, the interviewee doesn’t want to close any doors, so they give a non-answer. The interviewer, looking for hits on their website, runs this non-answer as a story, despite the fact that the very nature of the non-answer indicates that there is no story. There is no script, there is no offer, etc etc etc.
The phrase comes from this video of a cat that growls in a way that seems to be forming words.
And now on to the Oh Don Piano:
Yesterday I talked with Jamie Bell about his latest film, Mister Foe (known in the UK as Hallam Foe) as well as his career and some upcoming projects (like Defiance, the WWII movie he made with Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber. The best advice Craig gave him, Bell said, was to always keep his head up during action scenes), so I had to squeeze in a question about a possible Jumper 2. The original made some good money, and Fox has made some noise about a sequel. Bell’s character was left alive,if immobilized, at the end of the first film, so I wondered if he’d be up for the sequel.
“Only if it was with Doug Liman,” he said. “I had a really good time with that character.”
Earlier in the interview I asked Bell about his penchant for working with unique and visionary directors (just check out his filmography – it makes an auterist wet his pants), and he said that he had many great experiences with these directors, and a couple of “crazy” ones as well. Bell confided that Liman was one of the crazy ones, which delights me to no end. I don’t have to work with these guys, so I like it when I hear good stories about them.
Meanwhile, Bell has no plans for a comedy in the near future, which is a bummer because I discovered that he’s actually quite funny. We talked about how surprising it is that both he and his Undertow director David Gordon Green are so funny, and Bell said he’d love to do a comedy with David. So now you have twice the Oh Don Piano for your money.