Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Air Bud - Golden Receiver Special Edition DVD Review
Click below to check out JAM's review of Disney's AirBud - Golden Receiver at www.HollywoodTeenZine.com
Ice Castles DVD Review and Interview with Taylor Firth
Click on the picture below to head to HollywoodTeenZine for JAM's and Bessie's full review.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Figure Skater Taylor Firth Interview with HollywoodTeenZine
TAYLOR FIRTH INTERVIEW - Ice Castles
By: JAM from HollyWoodTeenZine
Hi Taylor, how are you doing?
I’m doing very well, how are you?
I’m doing ok. Let’s just start out with some background on you. I read on one of the websites that was talking about you, that you started skating because you were bored sitting on the sidelines watching your sisters?
Yes.
Because more of you wanted to do it rather than just watch?
Well, I was always an active little kid and so when saw my older sister getting to skate and have a little fun, I was a little jealous so my parents allowed me to figure skate and I fell in love with it.
At what age did you realize that you were really good at this?
I kind of think I was around 11 or so, I started doing double axles and triples and you know, I went to Junior Nationals and I started to get really excited and passionate about it.
I know that sibling rivalry can kind of come in. Does it help to having a sister that competes at a high level or is there challenges with that?
Well, as far as with my sisters, they’ve always been amazing. We are probably weird for the American family. I mean we all love each other. We get along really well. We have never really had fights, we have little bickers, but it’s usually about cleaning something up and why didn’t they clean it up. We really have a great family and we’ve never had time for sibling rivalry and it definitely was a huge help having my sisters on the ice and understanding what it’s like to be a competitor and just everyday stuff and emotionally and mentally and physically what goes into that sport. So it was; it was great to have people that are very close to me and doing something that is very close to my heart and being able to face it together.
Who are some of your skating influences?
You know, every time that I, um, work with my coaches they give me something new and something really important to think about and it definitely means like my second parents to me. My current coaches are Kirk Wyse and Lenel van den Berg. They are really great guys and I’ve learned a lot from them and a lot of that really helped me with the movie role, just hard work and the effort to have to go into it and not giving up when you feel you can’t do something. Yeah, I definitely owe my great life lessons to them.
Can you tell our readers a little bit about the movie?
Yeah, it’s about a girl who is basically from a small town and she gets recognized by a really big name coach in figure skating and he wants to take her under his wing and try to build her up to be an amazing super star, and as she gets into that role more and more, she realizes that she is losing herself and ends up getting injured in a figure skating accident and goes blind. So it’s basically about her rise to fame and then being brought back down again and how she is going to fight to get back to where she was with figure skating and doing what she loves with the people that she loves.
Now did you audition for the role or were you approached for the part?
I actually...I was approached for it. My coaches found an email in this fan folder asking me if I wanted to try out for the role and of course I was ecstatic and how could you turn it down. I really didn’t think I was going to get the part, I was just excited that I was going to be able to try out for it. I thought that I was just going to be a skating double. So I tried out for it and I really didn’t have high hopes, but just being considered for the role, I was so thrilled. Thenone thing after another and things worked out. They saw something in me that they really liked and they casted me for the role.
Did you take any acting classes before the role?
Well, the extent of my acting career was basically the kid’s drama scenes at church, so I really didn’t have much of a background with it, but Donald Wrye basically organized a few lessons for me and it was fun. It was interesting. It was definitely something out of my comfort zone, but it was fun learning and I only took a few lessons, but I think it definitely had...it encouraged me and it was fun. It kind of let me know what to expect when I got on the set and yeah, that was basically it.
What did you enjoy most about the character? It was Lexi, right?
Yeah. I actually really liked how much alike she and I was. We kind of went through a lot of the same struggles and a lot of our stories are the same. She was from a small town. I mean, I’m kind of from a small town. We both started out as really just girls loving to skate and then we got pulled into the big fast track of the world really fast. It takes a lot as you can tell with Lexi. There were a lot of things that she had to go through and leaving her studies and obviously I haven’t had a struggle quite like that, but she had a boyfriend that things were kind of up and down and that really helped me. I was really able to relate in those situations as I had a boyfriend at home. It was hard for us to be away for each other for that long, but made it better as a couple and I was really able to identify with Lexi. It was just amazing how much alike that she and I were.
I had pulled up your on-site diary and it talked a lot about you skating on that pond and really loving it. Can you tell us a little bit more about what it really felt like there?
There is a sense of freedom there. I mean when you’re in an ice rink, it’s all man-made and everything is built to last and when we were in the part it was just God’s miracles there. I love snow and obviously I love ice so it was just really cool to be able to be in nature and just a totally natural place. It was absolutely gorgeous, just the white, white, white snow and the real bright green evergreens and then the blue sky. It was breathtaking. It was my absolute favorite place to skate. It was pretty chilly, but loved it. I love every second of being outside on the ice.
Now with the scenes where you are officially a blind skater in the movie, how did they kind of do it and did it involve a lot of bruises for you?
Oh, no, not at all. You know, everyone was really great about it. They asked me if I wanted a stunt double, but that’s what we do as a figure skater, I fall. As I’m learning, I fall. I wasn’t used to it and it was a long day, but the day that we filmed a lot of the scenes where I had to fall, it was a long day, but like I said it was really excited that I got to do all my own stunts. I was really hoping that that will be something that I will be able to continue doing if I continue acting, I would love to be able to say I’d like to do my own stunts. So who knows if that will actually happen, but, you know, it was totally normal for me.
How was the time you had to skate with Michelle Kwan there?
Oh, that was just...I can’t even describe it. It was so amazing. She was a normal, normal person. She didn’t act condescending at all or pretentious. She was a doll. She was very easy to talk to and she gave me some tips about skating. She’s been in it so long so it was great to have her for a mentor, just for even the 15 minutes that I got to talk to her alone. It was really cool. It was a dream for me.
Did you think the acting was harder or the skating while you were out there?
You know that’s a funny question, actually. I didn’t really have too much...I mean, I was on the ice all the time when we were filming, but I didn’t really have time to really jump and really do my normal day of practice. You know, I’m used to having three hours a day, five days a week where it’s hardcore stuff, but a lot of it what we were doing on ice was just waiting for cameras and going through our lines. We didn’t have too much real practice time going so the skating scenes were pretty stressful for me because we would have almost 10 hours shoots of skating and obviously my stamina has gone down to basically nothing so it was a little nerve racking for me, but I still loved it. And it was fun to be able to show the cast and crew another side of me other than acting and saying words, I was also able to do something very physical and very active and I loved kind of showing off for them a little bit. I really didn’t know what I was doing when I was acting. I was kind of just going by the beat of my own drum, but I knew what I was doing when it came to skating so I was excited to able to show them that.
Did you see the original movie before you filmed this?
I did. I saw it at first when I was really young when I first started skating, but I watched it again once I found out that I could be trying out for the role. I fell in love with the story all over again. It’s a beautiful story and it’s easy for everyone to connect with.
Have you seen your version already?
I have, yes. I’ve seen it a few times now. It’s so cool. It’s almost weird watching myself on screen. It’s way different than I was expecting it to, like it should be a home video that I am watching, but it’s definitely not, so. But, it’s really cool; I really enjoyed it.
It’s kind of nice that they used the same director for both. What did you learn from working with him?
I learned so much from Donald. I can’t even start to describe it. He’s an amazing man, a really great director. Again, another mentor to me. He loved on me. He was a really great guy, you know. We started off a little rocky, but I was able to keep up with that. I really liked him. We were able to joke with each other. Every day I would come on the set, he would give me a hug, kiss my head, good morning, darling. He was like a grandpa to me. (Don’t tell him I said that.) But, I loved him. He was great.
Were there certain things from the first film that he really wanted to keep or other things he really wanted to change?
I think he really wanted to keep the relationship between Lexi and Nick. I think he really wanted to try to keep that as similar as possible, keep the youth of the relationship and just the skating. He wanted there to be an emotional beauty to it. And there were some things they wanted to change. They wanted to modernize it and wanted to make the skating part more realistic to now-a-days. And they were trying to make it for Nick teaching Lexi to skate blind. They were trying to figure out better more realistic ways to show it and I really think they achieved what they were looking for.
And Nick, that was Rob Mayes, right?
Yeah.
What was it like working with him?
Well, I was very intimidated at first because you know I was just a kid compared to most of them and I had never acted before. I had no experience and I was a little intimidated and of course, he is a very good-looking guy. He is a sweetheart. So it was a little nerve-wracking for me, but he was an amazing, amazing guy. He was like my big brother on set. He really wanted me to have a great first experience with the film industry and he was great. And every time I was nervous, he would try to help me and calm me down and vice-versa. There were times when he was having a hard time and I tried to talk him through it. So we really did; we had a great relationship and it really nice we were able to have that youth together. So he definitely made my first acting relationship easy.
That’s awesome. One thing that I always like to ask, were there any like kind of funny behind the scene moments or pranks that were pulled on set?
As far as pranks go, I mean I was always all business (her voice had a slight wink-wink quality to it). So I wasn’t going to play a role in those things, but there were a few things that especially the crew did. The assistant director, he had this little megaphone and there were points where the crew would switch the siren instead of the megaphone so when he would go to talk to all the actors on set, he would push the button to start talking to actors and it would start this huge siren and the assistant director would have a heart attack every time that happened. There was some other little things when we were filming that happened. I would try to be on my best behavior though because I didn’t know what was tolorable and what wasn’t because I was nervous so much because I definitely would have been a part of it, but I didn’t want to step on any toes, so. But, yeah, we really did, we had a blast the whole time and I really enjoyed the crew and everyone. The different people and the fun things we did together and mostly when we were filming, there were always mishaps that happened. Obviously, not everyone can walk on ice with ease, but there was some good moments with that, but there was one part where Rob and I had to walk out a door really fast and the door was actually really hard to open and we were in the middle of filming and we had to walk really fast and we were like alright, let’s go. And you have to open the door and he jiggled the door and it wouldn’t open and he just kept trying. He must have tried five or six times and the crew and everyone was just laughing at him and of course he was getting real flustered because he couldn’t open the door, but no one called cut because we were having so much fun watching him struggling to open the little door.
That sounds like that would be great on a blooper reel.
I know, right? I kept telling Donald that he has to make something up like that. I just hope they make something up like that because we just did have some really fun moments.
What are you busy with now?
Well, right now, I’m really trying to sort through what I want to do with my future, my career. I would love to do another acting job. I had a blast doing it. I am hoping for something possibly in the Christian film industry. I am a very strong Christian and I have a very strong faith and it’s definitely a huge part of me, so I want to get that message out to people, try to be a positive role model and I’m just trying to sort out what I want to do, do I want to go into show skating, do I want to become an actor. Yeah, I have a lot of stuff on my plate, but I’m really lucky that I do have options and things so that I can sort through and try to decide what I want to do with my life.
Thank you Taylor for a great interview, and we wish you success with Ice Castles and your future plans!
By: JAM from HollyWoodTeenZine
Hi Taylor, how are you doing?
I’m doing very well, how are you?
I’m doing ok. Let’s just start out with some background on you. I read on one of the websites that was talking about you, that you started skating because you were bored sitting on the sidelines watching your sisters?
Yes.
Because more of you wanted to do it rather than just watch?
Well, I was always an active little kid and so when saw my older sister getting to skate and have a little fun, I was a little jealous so my parents allowed me to figure skate and I fell in love with it.
At what age did you realize that you were really good at this?
I kind of think I was around 11 or so, I started doing double axles and triples and you know, I went to Junior Nationals and I started to get really excited and passionate about it.
I know that sibling rivalry can kind of come in. Does it help to having a sister that competes at a high level or is there challenges with that?
Well, as far as with my sisters, they’ve always been amazing. We are probably weird for the American family. I mean we all love each other. We get along really well. We have never really had fights, we have little bickers, but it’s usually about cleaning something up and why didn’t they clean it up. We really have a great family and we’ve never had time for sibling rivalry and it definitely was a huge help having my sisters on the ice and understanding what it’s like to be a competitor and just everyday stuff and emotionally and mentally and physically what goes into that sport. So it was; it was great to have people that are very close to me and doing something that is very close to my heart and being able to face it together.
Who are some of your skating influences?
You know, every time that I, um, work with my coaches they give me something new and something really important to think about and it definitely means like my second parents to me. My current coaches are Kirk Wyse and Lenel van den Berg. They are really great guys and I’ve learned a lot from them and a lot of that really helped me with the movie role, just hard work and the effort to have to go into it and not giving up when you feel you can’t do something. Yeah, I definitely owe my great life lessons to them.
Can you tell our readers a little bit about the movie?
Yeah, it’s about a girl who is basically from a small town and she gets recognized by a really big name coach in figure skating and he wants to take her under his wing and try to build her up to be an amazing super star, and as she gets into that role more and more, she realizes that she is losing herself and ends up getting injured in a figure skating accident and goes blind. So it’s basically about her rise to fame and then being brought back down again and how she is going to fight to get back to where she was with figure skating and doing what she loves with the people that she loves.
Now did you audition for the role or were you approached for the part?
I actually...I was approached for it. My coaches found an email in this fan folder asking me if I wanted to try out for the role and of course I was ecstatic and how could you turn it down. I really didn’t think I was going to get the part, I was just excited that I was going to be able to try out for it. I thought that I was just going to be a skating double. So I tried out for it and I really didn’t have high hopes, but just being considered for the role, I was so thrilled. Thenone thing after another and things worked out. They saw something in me that they really liked and they casted me for the role.
Did you take any acting classes before the role?
Well, the extent of my acting career was basically the kid’s drama scenes at church, so I really didn’t have much of a background with it, but Donald Wrye basically organized a few lessons for me and it was fun. It was interesting. It was definitely something out of my comfort zone, but it was fun learning and I only took a few lessons, but I think it definitely had...it encouraged me and it was fun. It kind of let me know what to expect when I got on the set and yeah, that was basically it.
What did you enjoy most about the character? It was Lexi, right?
Yeah. I actually really liked how much alike she and I was. We kind of went through a lot of the same struggles and a lot of our stories are the same. She was from a small town. I mean, I’m kind of from a small town. We both started out as really just girls loving to skate and then we got pulled into the big fast track of the world really fast. It takes a lot as you can tell with Lexi. There were a lot of things that she had to go through and leaving her studies and obviously I haven’t had a struggle quite like that, but she had a boyfriend that things were kind of up and down and that really helped me. I was really able to relate in those situations as I had a boyfriend at home. It was hard for us to be away for each other for that long, but made it better as a couple and I was really able to identify with Lexi. It was just amazing how much alike that she and I were.
I had pulled up your on-site diary and it talked a lot about you skating on that pond and really loving it. Can you tell us a little bit more about what it really felt like there?
There is a sense of freedom there. I mean when you’re in an ice rink, it’s all man-made and everything is built to last and when we were in the part it was just God’s miracles there. I love snow and obviously I love ice so it was just really cool to be able to be in nature and just a totally natural place. It was absolutely gorgeous, just the white, white, white snow and the real bright green evergreens and then the blue sky. It was breathtaking. It was my absolute favorite place to skate. It was pretty chilly, but loved it. I love every second of being outside on the ice.
Now with the scenes where you are officially a blind skater in the movie, how did they kind of do it and did it involve a lot of bruises for you?
Oh, no, not at all. You know, everyone was really great about it. They asked me if I wanted a stunt double, but that’s what we do as a figure skater, I fall. As I’m learning, I fall. I wasn’t used to it and it was a long day, but the day that we filmed a lot of the scenes where I had to fall, it was a long day, but like I said it was really excited that I got to do all my own stunts. I was really hoping that that will be something that I will be able to continue doing if I continue acting, I would love to be able to say I’d like to do my own stunts. So who knows if that will actually happen, but, you know, it was totally normal for me.
How was the time you had to skate with Michelle Kwan there?
Oh, that was just...I can’t even describe it. It was so amazing. She was a normal, normal person. She didn’t act condescending at all or pretentious. She was a doll. She was very easy to talk to and she gave me some tips about skating. She’s been in it so long so it was great to have her for a mentor, just for even the 15 minutes that I got to talk to her alone. It was really cool. It was a dream for me.
Did you think the acting was harder or the skating while you were out there?
You know that’s a funny question, actually. I didn’t really have too much...I mean, I was on the ice all the time when we were filming, but I didn’t really have time to really jump and really do my normal day of practice. You know, I’m used to having three hours a day, five days a week where it’s hardcore stuff, but a lot of it what we were doing on ice was just waiting for cameras and going through our lines. We didn’t have too much real practice time going so the skating scenes were pretty stressful for me because we would have almost 10 hours shoots of skating and obviously my stamina has gone down to basically nothing so it was a little nerve racking for me, but I still loved it. And it was fun to be able to show the cast and crew another side of me other than acting and saying words, I was also able to do something very physical and very active and I loved kind of showing off for them a little bit. I really didn’t know what I was doing when I was acting. I was kind of just going by the beat of my own drum, but I knew what I was doing when it came to skating so I was excited to able to show them that.
Did you see the original movie before you filmed this?
I did. I saw it at first when I was really young when I first started skating, but I watched it again once I found out that I could be trying out for the role. I fell in love with the story all over again. It’s a beautiful story and it’s easy for everyone to connect with.
Have you seen your version already?
I have, yes. I’ve seen it a few times now. It’s so cool. It’s almost weird watching myself on screen. It’s way different than I was expecting it to, like it should be a home video that I am watching, but it’s definitely not, so. But, it’s really cool; I really enjoyed it.
It’s kind of nice that they used the same director for both. What did you learn from working with him?
I learned so much from Donald. I can’t even start to describe it. He’s an amazing man, a really great director. Again, another mentor to me. He loved on me. He was a really great guy, you know. We started off a little rocky, but I was able to keep up with that. I really liked him. We were able to joke with each other. Every day I would come on the set, he would give me a hug, kiss my head, good morning, darling. He was like a grandpa to me. (Don’t tell him I said that.) But, I loved him. He was great.
Were there certain things from the first film that he really wanted to keep or other things he really wanted to change?
I think he really wanted to keep the relationship between Lexi and Nick. I think he really wanted to try to keep that as similar as possible, keep the youth of the relationship and just the skating. He wanted there to be an emotional beauty to it. And there were some things they wanted to change. They wanted to modernize it and wanted to make the skating part more realistic to now-a-days. And they were trying to make it for Nick teaching Lexi to skate blind. They were trying to figure out better more realistic ways to show it and I really think they achieved what they were looking for.
And Nick, that was Rob Mayes, right?
Yeah.
What was it like working with him?
Well, I was very intimidated at first because you know I was just a kid compared to most of them and I had never acted before. I had no experience and I was a little intimidated and of course, he is a very good-looking guy. He is a sweetheart. So it was a little nerve-wracking for me, but he was an amazing, amazing guy. He was like my big brother on set. He really wanted me to have a great first experience with the film industry and he was great. And every time I was nervous, he would try to help me and calm me down and vice-versa. There were times when he was having a hard time and I tried to talk him through it. So we really did; we had a great relationship and it really nice we were able to have that youth together. So he definitely made my first acting relationship easy.
That’s awesome. One thing that I always like to ask, were there any like kind of funny behind the scene moments or pranks that were pulled on set?
As far as pranks go, I mean I was always all business (her voice had a slight wink-wink quality to it). So I wasn’t going to play a role in those things, but there were a few things that especially the crew did. The assistant director, he had this little megaphone and there were points where the crew would switch the siren instead of the megaphone so when he would go to talk to all the actors on set, he would push the button to start talking to actors and it would start this huge siren and the assistant director would have a heart attack every time that happened. There was some other little things when we were filming that happened. I would try to be on my best behavior though because I didn’t know what was tolorable and what wasn’t because I was nervous so much because I definitely would have been a part of it, but I didn’t want to step on any toes, so. But, yeah, we really did, we had a blast the whole time and I really enjoyed the crew and everyone. The different people and the fun things we did together and mostly when we were filming, there were always mishaps that happened. Obviously, not everyone can walk on ice with ease, but there was some good moments with that, but there was one part where Rob and I had to walk out a door really fast and the door was actually really hard to open and we were in the middle of filming and we had to walk really fast and we were like alright, let’s go. And you have to open the door and he jiggled the door and it wouldn’t open and he just kept trying. He must have tried five or six times and the crew and everyone was just laughing at him and of course he was getting real flustered because he couldn’t open the door, but no one called cut because we were having so much fun watching him struggling to open the little door.
That sounds like that would be great on a blooper reel.
I know, right? I kept telling Donald that he has to make something up like that. I just hope they make something up like that because we just did have some really fun moments.
What are you busy with now?
Well, right now, I’m really trying to sort through what I want to do with my future, my career. I would love to do another acting job. I had a blast doing it. I am hoping for something possibly in the Christian film industry. I am a very strong Christian and I have a very strong faith and it’s definitely a huge part of me, so I want to get that message out to people, try to be a positive role model and I’m just trying to sort out what I want to do, do I want to go into show skating, do I want to become an actor. Yeah, I have a lot of stuff on my plate, but I’m really lucky that I do have options and things so that I can sort through and try to decide what I want to do with my life.
Thank you Taylor for a great interview, and we wish you success with Ice Castles and your future plans!
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