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Jeff Bridges Admits He Was As Disappointed With That 'Giver' Adaptation As You Were

By Vivian Kane | Celebrity | February 3, 2015 |

By Vivian Kane | Celebrity | February 3, 2015 |



Remember when The Giver trailer was released last year, in all its colorful, Divergent-esque shittery? Well, it turns out Jeff Bridges was just as disappointed with that movie as the rest of us. Bridges says he spent 20 years trying to get that book to the screen before he finally just had to let go.

It was difficult because I love the book, you know, and I’d been through many, many scripts trying to get the book right, and I knew there were all these fans. And then finally Harvey Weinstein said, ‘Oh, I’ll make that,’ but I knew getting Harvey involved, I was going to have to let go of my vision, because he had ideas.
Specifically, those ideas included casting the 20 year old Brenton Thwaites in a role orignially written as a 12 year old boy.
I just decided to do it sort of as a spiritual exercise in letting go. It’s like going over to another kid’s house and it’s not your house. … We’re going to play the same game, but it’s his toys and his things. So I said, I’m going to lighten up… It was an exercise in not being so precious.
Just to make this whole thing more upsetting, Bridges talks about the version of the movie that almost was.
If you get the DVD— I’m hoping, I haven’t seen the DVD, but I believe that’s what’s on there— there’s some footage of me directing my father and my mother— my mother plays the Meryl Streep part. It’s narrated by Bud Cort. And we did the whole book, man.

You can watch a video of the interview at HuffPo.