Eliana Dockterman

Gone Girl fans rejoice

As a rule, the works of great directors like Alfred Hitchcock ought not be touched. But if there is anyone who could potentially pull of a solid Hitchcock remake, it’s the team behind Gone Girl.

David Fincher, Ben Affleck and Gillian Flynn are teaming up to remake the Master of Suspense’s Strangers on a Train for Warner Bros., according to The Hollywood Reporter. The original 1951 film was a Hitchcock adaptation of a Patricia Highsmith novel that followed a tennis star (played by Farley Granger) who meets a charming psychopath. Affleck would take on Granger’s role with Fincher directing and Flynn penning the script.

Strangers (as the working project has been dubbed) is the third collaboration for Fincher and Flynn. After Flynn adapted her own novel Gone Girl for a Fincher-directed film starring Affleck, the writer and director teamed up again for the upcoming HBO show Utopia. So far it seems to be a match made in heaven: Gone Girl earned a whopping $365.3 million worldwide, Fincher’s highest-grossing film to date.

Still, Hitchcock had a very specific, eerie style and remakes of his films have not fared too well in the past. Remember that 1998 version of Psycho? Vince Vaughn and Gus Van Sant probably wish you didn’t. Flynn and Fincher’s take on Hitchcock will almost certainly prove better than Michael Bay’s upcoming remake of The Birds.

MORE: Is Gone Girl Feminist or Misogynist?

[THR]

The beloved comedian (and Twitter superstar) explains what's going to be written on her headstone

The final season of Parks and Recreation, which premieres on NBC on Jan. 13, will pick up three years after the previous season, wrapping up the stories of Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler), Andy Dwyer (Chris Pratt) and all our favorite government employees from Pawnee, Indiana.

TIME caught up with Retta, who plays Donna, about what we can expect from the show’s finale, her three favorite episodes from the show’s seven seasons and how she hopes to take on Alisha on The Good Wife next.

TIME: What was your reaction when you first found out there was going to be a three-year time jump before this final season of Parks and Recreation?

Retta: Surprised. I don’t know that I realized it was a time jump in the script. I remember watching the finale last season being like, “Oh, sh–, we jumped time,” and didn’t know we were going to stay. For some reason I thought we’d go back?

Will we get to see any crazy inventions that are coming in the next three years?

It’s surprisingly technologically advanced for three years into the future. But it’s fun because they get to do a lot of CGI stuff this season, which probably made this season much more expensive than they expected. They kind of took things that were already in the news that we know are coming and just put them in the show.

So what has happened to Donna since we last saw her?

Well, she started dating an ex-fling [played by Keegan-Michael Key]. So you get to see how that plays out. Does she stay monogamous? Or is that too hard for her?

What was it like getting to work with Keegan-Michael Key this season?

I love Keegan. I met Keegan years ago through a friend. I went to an improv show that he did at the ACME Comedy Theatre. Afterwards everyone went and had dinner, and we went to his house and played this card game called euchre, which I had never played before. And I won, and he could not have been angrier. So now he always brings that up when he sees me, which I’m, like, “Why are you causing yourself so much pain?”

But Keegan is the best. He’s very sweet. Like a lot of our guests on the show — Nick Kroll is like this too — they make you feel completely comfortable because they’re really good at characters and improv.

So how much improv goes on on the show?

We do a thing called “the fun run,” which is usually the last take that I do, where it’s balls out. You do whatever. You have to get across whatever you need to in that scene, but the route you take is your choice. Sometimes we get a page called “the candy bag,” which is different jokes to try. And once we’ve tried all the jokes that the writers want, we’re allowed to try our own jokes.

Both you and Donna are big live tweeters. Was that aspect of her character inspired by you?

Yes. Mike Schur did it for me. When that episode was coming up, he was like, “I have a surprise for you in the next episode.” He knows I live for Twitter.

Donna says her favorite show to live-tweet is Scandal. Do you have a favorite show to tweet about right now?

My favorite shows are Scandal, The Good Wife. I really like Vampire Diaries.

The last couple of episodes of The Good Wife have blown my mind.

Yeah, it’s been stressing me out lately. But it’s really well-done. I’m dying to do an episode of that show.

Who would you want to play?

Everybody keeps saying I should be a judge, but I would love to be a lawyer sparring Alicia. I mean, of course she would probably kick my ass. But I would love that. The guest stars on that show get such great parts.

If you could guest on Scandal what would you do?

I would love to spar with Olivia Pope as well. All those women are the sh–, and I want to share screen time with them. Or I would be Jake’s new love interest. Either one works. [Laughs]

It’s been years since “treat yo self” first came up on the show, and I still see it on Twitter all the time. Why do you think it’s still so popular?

I know. It’s insane. Sometimes that’s all people know to say to me because they can’t remember my character’s name and don’t know my real name.

It’s really funny. My friend was on set that day when we were filming, and I remember we did the scene. And my friend said after we shot it, “That’s going to be huge.” And I was like, “Really?” And she was like, “That was hilarious. It’s going to be huge.” And I didn’t think anything of it until the episode aired, and I looked at my Twitter account, and it was f—ing bananas. I’ve never had so many @-mentions in my life.

Will you ever get sick of it?

Oh, I’m already sick of it. [laughs] I’m not sick of it, I just think it’s hilarious that people think they’re being original when they say it to me. I’m like, “Do you realize how many times people say that to me all day every day?” People are like, “I have to do it.” It’s my “Dy-no-mite.” It’ll be on my headstone.

Any plans for watching the final episode?

There was talk of us all watching it together. So I’m sure we’ll find out in the next couple of weeks, since it’s going to be over in, like, six weeks. Another night to cry.

Did it get super emotional filming the last season?

No. It didn’t until the end. Then the last two days, you start to get a little bit of an ache. And then when we started to do series wraps on everyone when they finished their last scenes, it was a little teary. And it was worse for me in the wrap party.

Was there something that triggered it?

Alcohol. [laughs] Wine is crying juice. And vodka’s worse.

Do you have favorite episodes from the show?

Well, my favorite episode of all time is “Halloween Surprise” for three reasons. That’s where I got to live tweet, so I got to do a lot of ad libbing to the footage that was showing during the scene. Jerry [Jim O’Heir] had his fart attack, and that was one of the funniest things I’ve seen. Aziz [Ansari] in that scene had me dying. My favorite line of his was, “Jesus, Jerry. Did you have farts for lunch?” And then that was the proposal, which made me cry. And I read the script beforehand. I don’t know why I was so surprised and so affected. But it was my favorite thing ever.

Another one of my favorites is the possum episode. When Chris Pratt goes to tackle that possum on that golf course, and it jumps on him, and he’s just going, “He’s on my neck! He’s on my neck!” I saved that episode on my Tivo for the longest time because it made me laugh so hard.

Another favorite is when Leslie is on the hunting trip. Two things: One, I used to be so intimidated by Greg Daniels, and he was directing that episode. When we started to do the scene where I start crying because my car was shot, he was dying laughing during the rehearsal — it made me so much more comfortable around him. That was also the episode when Leslie got to talk to that ranger, and pretend that women don’t know how to be in the woods. That whole run of lines she has, like, “It’s so hard to think when you have to wear a bra,” or something. It’s just the greatest.

One of the most anticipated books of 2015, The Girl on the Train, hits shelves Jan. 13

As Rachel takes the commuter train to London every morning, she daydreams about the lives of an attractive couple she often sees breakfasting on their deck. As a sort of therapy to recover from a devastating divorce, she dubs the couple she watches Jess and Jason, conjuring a perfect suburban fantasy for them. Then one day she sees something shocking happen in their yard. She tries to go to the police, but struggles to explain why she’s observed this couple for so long, and proves an unreliable witness because of her struggles with alcoholism. She then sets out to solve the mystery of what she saw that day — and fill in the blanks from her missing memories of that night.

That’s the premise of Paula Hawkins much-anticipated debut thriller, Girl on the Train, which critics are comparing to Gillian Flynn’s smash hit Gone Girl. Though Hawkins has written women’s fiction under a pseudonym, this is her first try at a mystery novel; it has already been optioned by DreamWorks for a possible film.

Hawkins spoke with TIME about taking a risk by using an unlikable narrator, her Hitchcockian inspirations and why maybe folks shouldn’t be lumping Girl on the Train and Gone Girl together.

TIME: How did you get the idea for the premise of the story—a girl watching this couple she doesn’t know outside their house as she passes them on the train every day, and then one day she sees something suspicious?

Paula Hawkins: I commuted into the center of London every day, and I used to sit on the train. For parts of the journey I would go quite close to people’s homes, and I always liked that — being able to see inside people’s houses and imagining what those people were like. And then I was sort of idly wondering what one would do if one saw something shocking. If you saw, I don’t know, an act of violence or something. Would you tell anyone? Would you be able to actually do anything about it? So that’s basically where the germ of the story came.

You make it sound rather romantic, creating this imaginary world as you daydream on the train, but in the book it comes off as a little bit creepy.

Absolutely. You feel like you’ve made a connection with these people. You see their houses or maybe a painting on their wall that you like and think, “Oh that’s nice. I’d probably like those people.” And then you have to stop yourself and think, “You don’t know them. You’re just imagining.”

How did you decide to create a narrator that was not only unreliable but also rather unlikable?

She’s a character I had in my head for awhile. She’s extremely unreliable, obviously, because of her drinking problem. She’s not just unreliable to other people or the reader — she can’t even trust herself. She can’t trust her own memory; she can’t trust her own judgment.

But we’re seeing her at her absolute worst, I think. So for me, she’s actually a person where there’s probably plenty of good things about her, and I hope those things start to come through. And yes, for some people I think that may be off-putting, but I hope that she has enough character and enough backstory that she’s a credible figure, if not a likable one.

How did you make sure she was relatable or sympathetic?

Well, I think there’s still some fight in her even though she’s a bit hopeless. She still has grit underneath all that. You can see glimpses of the person that she used to be. You can see moments of tenderness. And I think some people will identify with the very real depression that comes with something like infertility or the loss of a partner. So I think there are certain aspects of her character that people will be able to sympathize with. But she’s also frustrating in the particular way that addicts are, where they just can’t seem to stop repeating the same mistakes over and over.

Obviously, her problem with alcohol affects her memory, which in turn affects how much we know as we’re reading. Did you do any research on blacking out from alcohol and how drinking can affect a person’s memory?

I have read about it, and the thing about blackouts is, there still is quite a lot about blackouts induced by alcohol use that I think we just don’t know. It’s not completely understood why some people get them and other people don’t. That’s as far as I understand— there are probably scientists who will tell me I’m wrong. [laughs]

But it was quite useful to me because I could have parts where she does remember things and parts where she doesn’t. Also memory loss can be affected by a host of other things as well like a traumatic incident or a blow to the head. So the blackout is a useful device for the thriller writer, but there are obviously other factors at play when it comes to memory.

MORE: The 100 Best Young Adult Books of all Time

There’s been a long tradition in thrillers of people trying to recover lost chunks of time. Were you inspired by any particular story?

I don’t know if there was a specific film or anything. Things like the movie Memento are interesting to me because our memories of the things we’ve done and how we’ve behaved form our notion of who we are, what our character is. So if part of that were missing, what does that actually say about you? And what does it say about your sense of responsibility for things if you can’t remember them? I think that whole area is really fascinating.

I grew up really loving the Alfred Hitchcock film The Lady Vanishes, where the main character gets a knock on the head at the beginning of the movie and then she has to piece together some events she can’t quite remember while she’s on this train ride. Nobody really believes her, and it seems like Rachel is put in a similar predicament.

That’s an interesting one because that’s Hitchcock, isn’t it? I was going for a slightly Hitchcock-style atmosphere. I did want that feeling of paranoia, self-doubt, suspicion. In that movie, everyone thinks that woman is making things up, and I wanted this book to have a similar sense. You can do fascinating things with the tricks memory can play and tell. People can come to believe things which didn’t happen at all if they’re told them enough times.

Why did you decide to use three different narrators and switch among them?

I actually started out just writing from Rachel’s perspective, but I thought that I needed to get inside Megan’s head as well, so I introduced her. Then, later on, I decided to write from three. For me, a lot of the book is about perceptions of people and how they change and how they can be completely off. So I think it was interesting to see these women all looking at each other and the men in their lives and make judgments. And then we can see it from somebody else’s viewpoint, and we can really understand the assumptions that are being made and the preconceptions that different people have.

Many of the male characters in the book are abusive in some way, whether it be emotionally or physically. Why did you choose to tell those stories?

I think it’s a book where nobody comes out of it looking particularly squeaky clean. For example, we see Scott from Megan’s viewpoint, and he’s controlling. When Rachel looks at him, she sees something completely different. But yes, you’re right — none of them are behaving in particularly good ways.

I think Scott feels his relationship is very precarious. She’s so flighty and restless all the time. So his controllingness is trying to hold on to her — not that I’m endorsing that as a way to behave. But I think those behaviors are quite common, and you can understand them while still saying that’s not a nice way to treat someone.

The three women in the story also share this anxiety over bearing children and parenting. How did that emerge as a theme in the book?

Well I think that they’re all at a point in their lives — late 20s, early 30s — where your decisions about having children, not having children, the way you raise them are really brought to the fore, aren’t they? People are constantly talking about it all the time. And, in a way I think perhaps doesn’t apply to men, people make judgments about you and your character based on decisions you make about motherhood. If you have lots of children, you’re feckless. If you decide not to have children, you’re selfish. People make all these value judgments about something that’s actually extremely personal.

And then you also have things like infertility which can be incredibly traumatic for people. So it’s something that ties them all together and it’s again about looking at how we judge people and the assumptions we make about people based on things we see from the outside.

MORE: Is Gone Girl Feminist or Misogynist?

I keep seeing the book being compared to Gone Girl. I’m wondering where that originated.

I don’t know who said it first, whether it was a publisher or reviewer or who. It wasn’t me. [laughs] But quite a few things are compared to Gone Girl, aren’t they? There are constantly people going, “Is this the next Gone Girl?”

It’s flattering to be compared to Gone Girl because I think Gone Girl is a great book. I actually think that atmosphere of the book is closer to Hitchcock. But I suppose both books have a very flawed female protagonist at their heart and are women who maybe are not what they seem. Our first view of Rachel is that she’s just this commuter going back and forth, she’s just another girl on the train, writing lists or looking at her phone. And as we get into the story, we realize she’s behaving in quite extraordinary ways.

Do you ever worry that all female thriller writers are being lumped together?

Yeah, I do. I don’t know if this would have happened if the book had been written by the man. I don’t know if those same types of comparisons are made for books written by men. Certainly, there is a tendency to lump women who write similar types of books together, and it’s not just in crime, is it? Women’s fiction is supposedly a whole genre of itself. There’s no male equivalent.

Your book has been optioned by Dreamworks. When you were writing it did you think of what a movie version would look like?

It has, and I can’t give you any more detail than that, I’m afraid. All I know is that they have it, they hopefully are working on it as we speak, but I don’t know what’s going to happen with that. Obviously it’s really exciting and would be amazing, but we shall see.

When I write, I imagine places more than people. I can see in my head the journey that Rachel takes all the time very clearly. I don’t imagine the character’s faces or anything like that. People keep asking me, “Who would you cast as Rachel?” And I can’t think of who I would. I would obviously been a terrible casting director. I thought at one point Michelle Williams might make a good Megan — the small, pretty, blonde delicate type of person. And I like her as an actress. She has great range.

Screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith and director Tim Burton are hopeful the recent Golden Globe winner will agree to reprise his role

Michael Keaton’s rather meta take on a washed-up actor who used to play a superhero in Birdman (a kind of in-joke given that Keaton himself played Batman in his younger days) has won him a Golden Globe and placed him at the top of many Oscar prediction lists. Now, screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith is hoping Keaton will return to another iconic role: Beetlejuice.

Grahame-Smith, whom director Tim Burton has asked to pen a sequel to the 1988 dark comedy, says he rejected the idea of rebooting the film with a new actor. Instead, he’s writing another humorous horror film that will take place in the present-day and allow Keaton to reprise his cackling, lecherous living-dead go-between.

Grahame-Smith told The Hollywood Reporter that Keaton advised him “less is more” when it comes to Beetlejuice, noting that in the original movie, the titular character doesn’t appear until he’s finally summoned midway through.

Burton said Beetlejuice 2 was “closer than ever” late last year, adding “There’s one Beetlejuice, and that’s Michael.”

[THR]

From The Honorable Woman to Fargo

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