Cover Stories - Jodie Speaks Out But Not Out

Well, the new Fall TV Preview edition of Entertainment Weekly is out today! WOOHOO!!!

No surprise that Addy, Kate Walsh hit the cover, thus covering both a new show (Private Practice) and an old show (Grey's Anatomy).

However, did anybody read last week's cover story interview with Jodie Foster? I know there's little love for her and her refusal to come out, but since I don't really care about that, I'll let it go. Her interview was still quite candid for a Hollywood star about other things including Mel Gibson, Russell Crowe, and admitting some of her previous movies weren't the best. I like that she can be honest in the media about that. I'm so used to PR driven interviews that it's nice to hear something where the publicist is probably banging her head outside the door (although is it any surprise it is Pat Kingsley, superagent that hid crazy Tom Cruise for all those year until he fired her before the couch-jumping incident"?)

I love that she essentially already admits her new movie The Brave One has a bad title that doesn't explain the movie AT ALL and is quite misleading.

EW: Then why is it called The Brave One?
JF: That's a really good question! [Laughs] That's many, many memos ago. The whole time we were like, ''You guys, this title is bad, this is misleading.'' I don't really know how to explain it except that it's the first title the script ever had and [producer] Joel Silver really believes that it has a strong feeling to it. Which it does. It's not wimpy. It would be a beautiful title for another movie. My only defense is that there are a lot of really good movies that have bad titles. Gone With the Wind. That was a bad title. The Way We Were. Terrible title!

On quality of her previous movie:
EW: I watched Inside Man again recently —
JF: Did you like that movie?
EW: Fun popcorn flick. Did you?
JF:I think that script was really, really good. It's not as exciting as I was hoping, but my character's great, even though if you cut her out of the movie it would not matter one iota.

On Mel Gibson:
EW: How did it feel watching your costar Mel Gibson take a bath in the press after his drunk-driving arrest?
JF: I love him. I knew the minute I met him that he was going to be my friend for the rest of my life. I don't often feel that way, and I certainly never feel that way about actors. I know Mel extremely well, and anybody who has even remotely met him knows what a severe alcohol problem he's had his entire life. This is a man who almost died.

On religion:
EW: Are you religious?
JF: No, I'm an atheist. But I absolutely love religions and the rituals. Even though I don't believe in God. We celebrate pretty much every religion in our family with the kids. They love it, and when they say, ''Are we Jewish?'' or ''Are we Catholic?'' I say, ''Well, I'm not, but you can choose when you're 18. But isn't this fun that we do seders and the Advent calendar?''

Basically calling out that Russell Crowe is flaky:
EW: Are you still going to direct Sugarland, about migrant workers in Florida?
JF: It just fell apart again. And that was a great part for Robert De Niro. That's the story in Hollywood. You make personal movies and they're really hard to get off the ground. S--- happens. Usually it's actors who screw you. That's what happened on Flora Plum [a Depression-era story about circus performers Foster first tried to shoot in 2000]. Russell Crowe had that accident [he injured his shoulder while prepping for the film], it shut down, there was a [potential] strike, I lost my financing, we got it together again with [someone else], he left, it was done. But on Sugarland, I said, ''I'm going to write this part for myself so that I'm in it and at least I'll have one actor I can count on for financing who's not flaky.'' So I did that and the studio pulled the plug despite that.

I kind of love her for that. She also states that she did Flight Plan because her agent told her to in the end, because it would do well (it did) even though the script wasn't there yet (it wasn't). Okay, maybe not the STRONGEST of females if you can't stand up to Pat Kingsley but who can? I'd be scared of Pat too? Look what happened after Tom Cruise fired her?