Brie,
Logan and Cody
Give a “ !”
by Lynn B.
Brie Larson (16), Logan Lerman (14) and Cody Linley (16) are three lively
teen actors who went through a hurricane together while filming the family
adventure film Hoot in Florida. The trio was introduced to little
burrowing owls which they all protect in the environmentally-friendly
film. The teens didn’t know such tiny creatures existed and are
happy to bring them and other endangered species to world attention. Their
message? At any age, you can make a difference.
We sat down
with the young actors in Beverly Hills recently. Brie was in a violet
patterned dress by Heatherette and had rock chick hair; black underneath
and blonde on top, Cody, who plays a cute but scruffy beach bum type in
the movie, looked the total opposite in classy gray tee and matching jacket.
Logan looked more “corporate” in a plaid dress shirt with
a blue loosened tie.
You know Brie
from roles in Sleepover with Alexa Vega and she starred as Bob
Saget’s daughter Emily on the WB’s show “Raising Dad”.
Her musical career is getting buzz as she opened for Jesse McCartney on
a national tour and headlined with the “Teen People” tour
last summer. Logan Lerman won a Young Artist Award playing Bobby in the
acclaimed WB TV series “Jack & Bobby”. He’s been
in The Patriot and played Mel Gibson as a kid in What Women
Want. He was in Ashton Kutcher’s The Butterfly Effect
and is now co-starring with Jim Carrey in The Number 23. Cody,
a Texas native, was in My Dog Skip as a kid and has been in Miss
Congeniality and Cheaper By the Dozen as well doing a lot
of TV guest shots.
So, what is
it like to have fun together on and off set and play teens who care enough
to make a difference? Check it out….
AGW: Logan’s
character in the movie is the new kid in town. Has anyone moved around
a lot to different schools or towns?
 Brie:
I travel a lot. It’s not necessarily that I move but I’m a
musician so I go to a lot of different places in the U.S. on tour. It’s
interesting because I was very much anti-California. I thought it was
very cliché being a blonde girl and going to the beach. I despised
it but when I went on tour, coming back home, I really loved California
again. You realize there is nothing else in the U.S. that’s really
like it. You also realize how diverse it is.
Logan: Being
an actor, you’re going from place to place every day.
Cody: I constantly
go back and forth from Texas to California. I was born in a small town
inside Dallas, Texas and that’s where I live today. I’m kind
of fortunate that I live in the same town with my grandparents and dad
and mom.
AGW: Are any
of you into any causes?
Brie: Me and
Logan are into helping kids with cancer.
Logan: I go
to charity events. I like to make them smile and make them happy.
Brie: We have
a pretty frivolous lifestyle. It’s not realistic in any sense so
it’s nice to be able to touch someone in that way.
Logan: It’s
great and really nice to make them happy.
Cody: I encourage
kids to get outside more and play. I’ve always kind of been like
that. I’m like my character in that I’m always outside and
playing basketball outside. Our generation is so known for being on the
computer playing video games and all that but really, the outside is really
beautiful. We should take care of it and take advantage of it.
AGW: Did you
know about the little burrowing owls in the film?
Brie: I read
the book a few years prior and I loved the book but thought those owls
were fictional.
Logan: Owls
living in the ground?
Brie: Yeah.
The movie adopted three of them.
 Logan:
We named them Wil, Carl and Jimmy (after writer/director Wil Shriner,
writer Carl Hiaasen and producer Jimmy Buffett) They’re great owls.
I got to hold Wil. He didn’t like me but they’re really cute.
AGW: Did he
peck at you?
Logan: It
kept trying to fly away.
Brie: I got
it all on film too. They gave us little video cameras so the first time
we saw the owls, we got our video cameras out and were filming ourselves
with the owls. There’s Logan.. ‘oh, oh, oh’ [trying
to catch the owl].
AGW: Will
that be on the DVD?
Brie: They
actually asked me to edit some stuff for the DVD, some goofy behind the
scenes stuff.
Logan: Did
you know they are putting our audition tapes on the DVD?
Brie: I’m
so excited. I asked them to do that. That was one of our first bonding
moments.
Logan: I loved
Cody’s. That was my favorite.
Brie: I had
known [director] Wil Shriner for many years. We go to each other’s
Christmas parties. He’s a main staple in my life and I went to audition
for the movie.
AGW: You certainly
don’t look like your character Beatrice today.
Brie: I felt
I was so wrong for Beatrice. I felt I was wasting everybody’s time.
I just wanted to see Wil. I ended up going and auditioning. I knew he
was going to see the tape that day so I left a message. ‘Hi, Wil.
I love you’ and they [the boys] make fun of me all the time. They
know why I got the job.
AGW: Brie,
having read the book on which the film is based, did you just feel you
weren’t anything like Beatrice the Bear?
Brie: It just
seemed so beyond myself to be able to play that character. This ungodly-like
role you couldn’t ever possibly play and it seemed like such a huge
honor. I’m a very big Carl Hiaasen [author of the book] fan just
as a person and an author. It’s an awesome opportunity and you don’t
think it could ever possibly happen to you because I’m just a kid
but we had fun.
Logan: When
you are working together you can’t be uptight and work 24-7. We
had a good time on set fooling around.
 Cody:
We had a blast on and off set. We had a rec room which was two hotel rooms
connected to each other in the hotel we were staying at that had a TV,
and games. We all play guitar so we’d make up this game where you
made up a song.
Brie: I was,
‘okay, you two have to make up a song about me’ and the two
of them would. It was like “The Bachelorette”. Then I had
to choose which was the best.
AGW: Are you
on the soundtrack?
Brie: Yeah.
I wrote a song for it called ‘Coming Around’.
AGW: Were
you familiar with Jimmy Buffett’s music before the film? He’s
more popular with your parents’ generation.
Brie: I like
the way it happened. All three of us knew of Jimmy Buffett.
Logan: We
knew who Jimmy Buffett was. We just weren’t familiar with his music.
Once I got the role and read the script, I got his CD and listened to
‘Margaritaville’ and thought it was great.
Cody: I didn’t
know too much about his music either and then I told my dad ‘hey,
I’m doing a movie with Jimmy Buffett’ and he’s like
‘are you serious?’
Brie: But
it’s nice that we don’t think of him as some iconic figure.
He’s like our friend.
Cody: I love
that guy.
Logan: He’s
such a cool guy. He’s a laid back surfer kind of guy.
AGW: Did you
think it was weird that your characters are modern kids but don’t
have text messaging or cell phones or Blackberries?
Logan: Not
every kid in America has a cell phone and text messaging. This is really
real, a timeless film. That’s why it was so great to be part of
it. It’s an intelligent film. It doesn’t just entertain you.
Brie: Cell
phones and the internet weren’t needed at all. That’s not
the message that we’re trying to get across. It would dumb it down
actually.
Logan: I think
the main message of this movie in my opinion, is that you can be any age
and make a difference. That’s what it really teaches you.
AGW: Cody,
your character runs like the wind. Can you really run fast like that?
Logan: Cody
is an incredible runner.
Cody: Well,
Michael Chapman was the DP on the set and he was just awesome and made
everything look so beautiful. Some of those shots of me running were just
so cool. I guess I’m kind of an active person. I run a lot and play
basketball a lot so I guess I think I’m a pretty fast runner but
I looked at the movie and they were like ‘you don’t have to
run as fast as you can on some of the shots’ and I wanted to really
look like I was sprinting. ‘Don’t worry. It’ll look
good’. Then I saw it and wow.
 Logan:
I’m a horrible runner. My dad’s a big runner and he’s
like ‘wow, you have horrible form’. Thank you, dad.
Brie: I had
to play soccer. I’m a soccer star in the film and I looked awful.
I was ridiculed forever. I was the first to get picked on. I warned everybody,
‘I know I’m supposed to be this major soccer star and I’ve
never kicked a soccer ball in my life’. They’re like ‘we’re
actually not going to have a soccer scene in the movie. You’re just
going to have to carry the soccer ball’. I was like ‘awesome,
perfect’. But we ended up doing the little vignettes at the end
of the film. We decided that Beatrice needed a big soccer scene. They
wanted me to do all this dribbling down the field and we ended up having
to cut it out because I’m just so awful. I was supposed to get it
in [the goal] and the guys were supposed to do ‘yeah [with a thumbs
up] and I kept missing it. And Logan was yelling ‘you suck!’.
AGW: Could
you guys really ride a bike with Brie pedaling and Logan riding on the
handlebars?
Brie: He was
so funny the first time we did that!
Logan: I was
so scared. She’s riding on gravel.
Brie: And
I can’t see.
Logan: It’s
easy to slide out.
Brie: We’d
just met each other too, which was funny. I was like ‘my name’s
Brie, nice to meet you. Get on the handlebars. Put your life in my hands’.
Logan: I’m
like ‘okay..need pads. Can I have a helmet?’.
Brie: it was
nice for me because I had that backpack on and it was like an airbag.
He had nothing. That was very uncomfortable. They really wanted him to
feel pain.
AGW: Luke
Wilson plays a cop that is onto you in the movie. He seems like a fun
guy.
Logan: Luke
is the best. On set and off set, he’s hysterical. I’m a big
fan of his movies, like Old School and Rushmore and all that. It was a
lot of fun.
Cody: In between
takes, he’s kind of like a big kid.
Logan: There
was a tire like 50 yards away and we’d try to throw rocks through
the tire.
Cody: We were
all trying to see who could hit it first. Wil would be like ‘okay,
we’re rolling’ and Luke would still be throwing at the tire.
We had a good time.
AGW: You were
shooting this during last year’s hurricane season?
Logan: Yeah.
I’m an L.A. kid so I’m not used to that extreme weather. Even
when I first got there it would be like pouring rain for like ten minutes
and then just stop. We went through Katrina which was incredible. It really
wasn’t that bad where we were but, to us, it seemed so scary.
Brie: it was
a category one by then. I remember getting a phone call at six in the
morning, and I’m like a noon sleeper. That was insane. Someone said
we had to switch hotels and I was like ‘no thanks’, click.
They called again. ‘you really need to go’. I had people banging
on my door because they wanted to tape it up. We were staying at this
amazing hotel, the Marriott Harbor Beach which is right on the ocean.
Me and Cody had to move to some other hotel. We packed up and went to
the grocery store and got all these snack foods and got candles and flashlights.
We set our stuff down [at the new hotel] and the second we sat it down
all these alarms went off. ‘There’s a fire in the building.
Can you please exit’ so we brought all our guitars and everything
with us so we had to carry our suitcases and guitars down like thirteen
flights of stairs. It seemed really nice being on the top floor in the
suite until we had to walk down all those stairs. Suddenly, not so great.
Logan: I was
in a different hotel. I was sitting down in my room talking to friends
and I opened the window and there’s a huge hurricane out there and
it was crazy. My mom and I were in shock because people were surfing during
the hurricane. I wanted to yell to them ‘get out of there’.
My mom is like yelling. They’re not listening. We were ‘okay,
we’re not going to look’. We didn’t want to see anybody
get horribly injured.
AGW: Brie,
do you have a record coming out or another tour?
Brie: Yeah,
I’m actually working on my new record right now. It’s like
1960’s folk music. Oh, Logan, remember when…….
The actors
start chatting and having a blast reuniting after time apart. They have
to be gathered up and taken out of the room with friendly goodbyes to
us on the way out.
Pictures courtesy
of and copyright New Line Cinema, 2006
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