If Josh Lucas looks a little antsy, it’s understandable: His wife is seemingly minutes away from delivering their first child – and here he sits, in his publicist’s SoHo office, talking about his new movie, “Hide Away.”

He makes sure his phone is on, noting, “I’ve got a bad reputation about not being available by phone,” with an embarrassed smile.

The film, “Hide Away,” is a tone poem of sorts about grief, directed by Chris Eyre (“Smoke Signals”). Shot in Traverse City, MI, in a mere 15 days, the story follows Lucas’ character, called the Young Mariner, as he buys and moves onto a dilapidated sailboat near the end of summer and spends the fall and winter living on it while he fixes it up. The story examines the character’s efforts to come to terms with a tragedy in his recent past as he contemplates whether or not he has a future. (More…)

In a few minutes, actor Chazz Palminteri will take the stage for a Q&A session with an audience that’s just seen his new film, “Mighty Fine” – and he’ll kill it, telling funny stories about his early life as a struggling actor, getting his big break with “A Bronx Tale,” and how he spent that afternoon watching a matinee of “Jersey Boys” on Broadway with buddy Robert De Niro.

But sitting backstage at the Emelin Theater in Mamaroneck, NY, not far from his home in Bedford, Palminteri is quiet: “I’ve been doing press for this film all day,” he says of the family drama. “I’m a little tired.” (More…)

If the same proportion of people in the United States saw “The Avengers” as the percentage of French citizens who have seen “The Intouchables,” the Marvel super-hero-fest would have grossed well over $1 billion domestically (instead of slightly less than half of that).

As it is, “The Intouchables,” opening in limited release in the United States today (5/25/12), has sold more than 20 million tickets in France – in a country with a population of 60 million. When you factor out children, the percentage of people who have seen it is even higher. (More…)

If Bobcat Goldthwait were a teen-ager today, “I’d be a kid making web content with a camera somewhere. If I was a young man, I might have bypassed the whole comedian-actor thing and just been a filmmaker.”

He pauses, chuckles, then says, “Then I’d probably have spent my whole life going, ‘I wonder if I could have been a comedian.’” (More…)

It’s not as easy as it used to be to get a movie made. But that hasn’t slowed writer-director Richard Linklater, whose latest film, “Bernie,” opened in limited release April 27 to strong box office.

“I have three or four balls in the air right now – and I’m usually writing two or three scripts all the time,” Linklater, a still-boyish 51, says, sitting in a Manhattan hotel. “I have a huge backlog of projects – probably eight or nine that are viable. I used to be able to dig in my heels about what I wanted to do next. Now, it’s about whichever of the three or four projects I have ready to go can get financing.” (More…)