{"id":144490,"date":"2025-09-15T00:57:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T00:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/144490\/"},"modified":"2025-09-15T00:57:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T00:57:09","slug":"shailene-woodley-ben-foster-on-dialogue-lite-70s-drama-motor-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/144490\/","title":{"rendered":"Shailene Woodley, Ben Foster on Dialogue-Lite ’70s Drama ‘Motor City’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIf you ask Ben Foster<\/a>, he was born to play the part of a mustachioed, chest hair-baring gangster in the \u201870s set drama \u201cMotor City<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe had a fabulous wardrobe designer, Amy Roth, who went into the deep trunks but also went to the great designers who did Burt Reynolds and Frank [Sinatra],\u201d Foster told Variety about preparing for the role. \u201cBut the truth is, I was in utero, in my mom, in a disco roller-skating rink in Boston. [My parents] didn\u2019t have a car and she would roller skate to work.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSo, that\u2019s how the chest hair came to be,\u201d his co-star Shailene Woodley<\/a> cracked as their director Potsy Ponciroli chimed in: \u201cWe actually designed every piece of his outfit around the chest hair.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIndeed, Foster embraced the retro look so much so that he arrived at the Variety Studio at the Toronto Film Festival<\/a> sporting an outfit that would surely be approved by his character \u2014 amber-tinted aviator sunglasses and slightly bell-bottomed pants, with his cell phone bumping era-appropriate tunes. (Woodley and Foster also embraced vintage vibes on the red carpet at the Venice Film Festival,<\/a> where the film made its world premiere.)<\/p>\n

\n\tCommitting to the bit was crucial to the success of \u201cMotor City,\u201d as the action thriller is nearly free of dialogue. (\u201cThere\u2019s loosely six lines,\u201d Ponciroli noted. \u201cThe \u2018Hi\u2019s don\u2019t really count.\u201d) As such, wardrobe styling and other modes of non-verbal communication \u2014 from raising an eyebrow or throwing a cutting look to the way one lights a cigarette or sways to a disco beat \u2014 were particularly key to creating character.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWords can be such a great device to lie to the people around us about how we\u2019re actually feeling and who we actually are,\u201d Woodley explained. \u201cWithout words, there\u2019s still the ability to put on an illusion, but I like to say the space is thinner between what is truth and what is story. And in this film, we were fortunate enough as actors to have this guy [gesturing to Ponciroli] as our brilliant leader and companion and collaborator who trusted us to play.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSet in 1970s Detroit, \u201cMotor City\u201d stars Alan Ritchson <\/a>as John Miller, a blue-collar auto worker, who falls for Sophia, the ex-girlfriend (Woodley) of Reynolds, a rising drug kingpin (Foster). In retaliation, Reynolds enlists a corrupt cop (Pablo Schreiber) to frame John on drug charges, sending the innocent man to prison, where he plots his revenge and to regain his lost love. What follows is nearly 100 minutes of violent vengeance as the two men wage war for Sophia\u2019s heart, all set to a propulsive retro score curated by Grammy winner and Detroit native Jack White.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt was originally written as more archetypal in the sense that there was an antagonist, a protagonist, and she was really sort of a victim to the antagonist to be saved by the protagonist,\u201d Woodley said, explaining why she was interested in playing the Helen of Troy-esque character.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe energy dynamics between Sophia and these two men \u2014 one of which provided a home, a safety, a relaxation for her nervous system, a coming home too. And one provided, the space for her to be a wild woman and to let her feminine really fly in big colorful ways, but didn\u2019t necessarily cater to her feeling safe or protected,\u201d she said. \u201cThat dichotomy between the heart wanting two things and the intellect knowing there\u2019s one choice to be made is something that I can certainly relate to and I think many people can relate to.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFoster was drawn in by the film\u2019s \u201cbeautiful script,\u201d which was about 89 pages long. \u201cThere\u2019s not a lot of dialogue, but it\u2019s behavior-based. If we think about character, it\u2019s how we behave,\u201d he said about playing the ruthless gangster: \u201cTo echo Shai, his love is devoted. It\u2019s not stealing the princess. It\u2019s his person. And he\u2019ll put out fire with gasoline to get her back.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe added: \u201cI just love dancing with Potsy and Shai. We all work very intuitively. We understand shapes, we dig on dance, but we\u2019re also hunting something that hurts, and to share that a little bit and exchange that when the cameras are rolling, it\u2019s jamming.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd because this is the disco era, the characters quite literally dance through the drama. \u201cThe dancing was the easiest scenes in the world. It was basically [saying] \u2018Action,\u2019 then hold on and watch,\u201d Ponciroli said. \u201cWe have like an eight-minute cut of the disco scene because everything was incredible! We had to whittle that down.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFor more about the movie (as well as Woodley teasing her role in \u201cParadise\u201d season 2<\/a>), watch the video above.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you ask Ben Foster, he was born to play the part of a mustachioed, chest hair-baring gangster…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":144491,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[68048,49,48,75,67007,337,43179,2559],"class_list":["post-144490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ben-foster","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-motor-city","tag-movies","tag-shailene-woodley","tag-toronto-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144490\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}