Ron Livingston Talks About Music Within
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On the Americans with Disabilities Act: Ron Livingston is floored by how long it actually took for the ADA to happen. “The thing that's extraordinary about it is it's really, I think, a testament to what a great job these guys did in making it happen. It seems like it's been around forever. It seems like it should have been around forever. The way in which it's affected the rest of us is it's been easy.
They're really not asking for that much. Richard said it's the battle that we've won and we're the only ones who noticed that we won it.”
The Relationship Between Richard Pimentel and Art Honneyman: Theirs is a unique friendship. “Art speaks, because of his cerebral palsy, he has to strain,” explained Livingston. “He's got to put a lot of effort into speaking so that he can make any sound at all. In the course of it, he not only [makes low sounds], there's a very low pushed sound and there's a very high, breathy, raspy sound that almost cancels out. So for a normal listener, it's so confusing to hear those sounds on top of each other that nobody can make any sense of what Art says. It's next to impossible.
Richard, because of his particular hearing damage, can only hear the very low register and he hears it as if it's a party coming from four doors down, like just the bass drum on the stereo. Not only can he not hear any of the distracting top noises, but because Art has to work so hard to force the lower sounds out, it actually makes it audible within Richard's range.
So they had this crazy coincidence that Richard is the only guy in the world that can understand Art and Art's the only guy in the world that Richard can understand. From that moment on, the two of them were basically inseparable.”
Livingston says the two are still close. “They're very dear friends. At some point, Richard got married and raised a family and moved on. But with the advent of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which is up actually for extension this year and I'm kind of proud that they're going to show the movie in Washington to members of Congress before they vote on it again, Art really doesn't need as many people to take care of him these days because he's pretty good at getting around Portland himself. Once they put the ramps on the curves and once they put the ramps on the buildings, to a great extent, Art's good to go.”
Up Next - The Time Traveler's Wife: "We're shooting that up in Toronto. I'm playing Gomez in Time Traveler's Wife, which means nothing to you unless you have read the book. Yeah, I think we're about halfway through shooting and I expect it will probably come out this summer."
Asked in what time frame Gomez exists, Livingston replied, "He's kind of through the course of their lives, he's a friend of Clare's. The story's a love story and the really interesting element about it is the time travel in it. For me anyway, when I read it, it feels like a metaphor for when we all have times when we think about the important memories of our lives. We go back to moments and it almost feels like we're traveling back to them and seeing them happen again. Sometimes you can go back and have a conversation with a younger version of yourself or a younger version of the person that you're in love with and say, 'Hey, I'm really sorry about that thing I did 20 years ago. I wish I hadn't done that.' And the person can go, 'Hey, that's okay, a--hole' or whatever. Or sometimes you can go to the future and talk to yourself in 20 years, wherever it is that you think you might be but don't know yet.
In the book there's a character that can actually do that. It actually happens, and he can't even control it in fact. It ends up being a love story that's told all at once. It's not from start to finish, it's a love story that's told from start to finish to middle to start to finish to middle. It's kind of beautiful."
The Mechanics of Time Travel: The film doesn't really delve into the science behind the time travel. "They do get a little bit into cause and effect, but it's not like he builds a machine. It's more like epilepsy. He'll have a seizure and the seizure will take him back to another time in his life. He's drawn -- Eric Bana plays the character -- he's drawn to the pivotal, critical, emotional moments in his life [that] always seem to keep bringing him back. It's very emotional."
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