AMERICANWAY

ITINERARY TOP TO BOTTOM: JONATHAN LEIBSON/GETTY IMAGES; STEVE DIETL; WARNER BROS./COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION L O O K I N G B A C K 3 4 D EC E M B E R 2 01 4 A A .CO M/A M E R I C A NWAY { M O V I E S } Back to the Future CLARK DUKE is back in the hot tub for round two of time travel. C la rk Duke is time tr aveling again, but this time he's headed to the future rather than the past. The actor-comedian, who made a splash in 2010's Hot Tub Time Machine, returns to the Jacuzzi in that fi lm's much-anticipated sequel, Hot Tub Time Machine 2, out in early 2015. W hen he and his friends at- tempt to go back in time to retool their present, they accidentally land in 2024, with uproarious results. The skipped decade means that Duke's character, Jacob, is now living the good life. In the fi rst movie, set in the 1980s, Jacob felt miserable and trapped, but "all of a sudden I'm a big shot and I'm running Loogle [the company started by Jacob's father, Lou], and my life is in a good place, so I don't necessarily want to go back." Duke hopes the sequel will amuse audiences like the original did. If he shares anything with Jacob, it's enjoying well-earned success and the journey along the way. The fi rst in his family to pursue a career in entertainment, Duke remembers having "stage presence" as a kid. "I don't know if I was hammy," he says. "I defi nitely wanted to do this, like, from a young age, and I was very, uh, engaging and talkative." He landed his fi rst role at age 7 in the sitcom Hearts Afi re starring John Ritter, and after the show ended in 1995, he took a hiatus from acting to fi nish his schooling back home in Glenwood, Arkansas. Later, while at Loyola Mar ymount University, he befriended actor Michael Cera, and the pair created an online mockumentary about their showbiz adventures ca lled Clark and Michael. They also w rote, di- rected and produced the series, and the pi lot ser ved a s D u ke 's col lege t hesi s. Duke has since appeared in such fi lms as Sex Drive, Kick-Ass and A .C.O.D. (Adult Children of Divorce) and in such telev i- sion shows a s Greek a nd T he Of f ice. He cu r rently g uest stars on T wo and a Half Men. Although applauded for his comedy, Duke says he would like to take a crack at drama someday. His ideal ca reer, he says, would be si m i la r to wh at " Woody A llen has, where you just kind of w rite and direct and star and produce your own stuff . "And, I mean, so much has changed in the last 10 years of my life that, you know, anything seems possible for the next 10." —Julie Jacobs Driving Miss Daisy A S TO L D TO J . R E N T I L LY In 1989, making a film of Driving Miss Daisy — despite its pedigree as a Pulitzer Prize-winning off-Broadway play and the involvement of Oscar-nominated director Bruce Beresford and legendary producer Richard Zanuck — seemed like an impossible dream. But the film, released Dec. 15 of that year, was nominated for nine Oscars, winning four (including Best Picture) and grossing $146 million worldwide. Beresford, 74, reflects on the film's rocky road to production. "No studio wanted to make this movie. They all thought it was an old black man and an old Jewish lady chatting in a kitchen, so who wants to watch that, you know? We talked to Disney for a while about financing it, and they were interested in making the film if we cast Eddie Murphy and Bette Midler in the lead roles. Now, I love both of them, but that would never work; they were both far, far too young for the roles. Finally, Zanuck said, 'If you cut the $17 million budget in half, we might have a better chance.' So we came up with a new budget of $7.5 million, which meant all of us — even [the film's stars] Morgan Freeman and Jessica Tandy — worked for basically nothing and we'd have only 32 days to shoot. That's when Warner Bros. came onboard. As carefully as I planned and storyboarded the movie, when we came to the last day of shooting, we still had three very long, major dialogue scenes to get done. Ordinarily, you'd shoot that over the course of a week or more, but we hunkered down and shot all three of those scenes in one long take apiece in a single day. It was like theater, and that could only be done with actors as truly brilliant as Morgan and Jessica." EXCLUSIVE! To celebrate the release of Magic in the Moonlight (Sony Pictures Home Entertain- ment, $35), we're giving copies of the Blu-ray disc to fi ve lucky readers. To enter, go to aa.com/ americanway and click on "Deals and Steals." FROM LEFT: Clark Duke, Rob Corddry and Craig Robinson in Hot Tub Time Machine 2

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