John Cusack Talks Up His New Period Piece 'Shanghai'

John Cusack has been frank about his movie choices in the past. As recently as last year, he said he felt he's only done ten good movies in the past 25 years. Ten out of about fifty? "Well, there aren't 40 that are great, put it that way," he said.One of the good ones, in his opinion, was 1408, the Stephen King adaptation that was almost a one-man show for Cusack. I happen to agree that it was a pretty effective genre picture. Now Cusack has re-teamed with the director of 1408, Mikael Håfström, for the period piece Shanghai, and the actor says he jumped at the film for a few reasons. "To do something that has a big budget, a great scope, with a great director and great actors that has the quality and level of writing and the level of production design ... is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," says the normally reserved Cuse. "Any actor in his right mind would want to do this film -- would die to do it." So what's so special about Shanghai? He's right about the cast: Chow Yun-Fat, Gong Li, and Ken Watanabe co-star, and the film kind of has an inverse Third Man storyline: Cusack works in American intelligence just before the attack on Pearl Harbor, and he travels to Japanese-occupied Shanghai to investigate the death of a friend. Cusack mentioned the film's budget, which hovers around the $10 million mark. That's a pittance in the U.S., but in the Asian film world, it's a healthy chunk of change. Still, with Cusack's up-and-down career at the box office, maybe finding good roles in good films is a better formula than playing for the payday in a romantic comedy so he can do the movies he really wants to do. It doesn't matter how many people saw Must Love Dogs; none of them checked out his labor of love, War, Inc. But it sounds like he's genuinely excited about Shanghai, so we'll take his word for it for the time being. Let's hope if it's as good as he says that The Weinstein Company doesn't make the film jump through a ton of hoops when it's scheduled for release next year. After all, the company more or less buried Cusack's Sundance hit, Grace is Gone. That is, unless you can find another word for a movie that made $50,000 in theaters.

Comments

[Will]

Maybe this will be the Coos's springboard to Con Air 2 that we've all been waiting for!

[Get The Big Picture]

Oh sure. Let's make that one happen...

[terry]

Gong Li is hot.
It's coming out Dec. 08 . Not next yearr.

[Will]

Imagine all of the tie ins you could have if Con Air 2 was called Con Agra. I mean, there's Manwich, Veg-All, Slim Jim, Poppycock...

The list goes on and on...

[Will]

Or even better, what if those were all character names? Who would play ManWich, I wonder?

[Get The Big Picture]

ManWich. That's awesome. Do they also make SteakUmmmms?

Also, on a note quasi-related to this story, I'll check on the release date. None of the usual sources or the Weinstein website has any release date yet, and it was never scheduled to open this year before it entered the production stage.

[Hardy]

It's opening Christmas 08.

[karen]

I'm looking forward to seeing it. You look great! very handsome. And she is gorgeous. I love John Cusack.