Mike_Rosen's Blog

I'm not the Entertainment Reporter-type, so don't hold me accountable for all the particulars.  But while SXSW Film is something for our city to be very proud of, I'm partial to Sundance.  Its setting in the Utah mountains is unbelievable (unless you hate the cold).  And it has a Hollywood-like energy to it.

But it's a good thing for the locals that Austin restaurants near the venues don't do what they do in Park City:  go to fixed menus and jack up their prices.  My wife and I decided to splurge on our only visit there a couple years ago.  (Not like we had a choice unless we wanted McDonalds.)  Our dinner for two cost more than her plane ticket!  But the food as outstanding and the service even better.

Anyone experienced both and have a preference? 

Yes, the rumor about Angelina Jolie and me is true.  And it’s no Aniston-like plot.  My colleague, Jenni Lee, and I shot a scene in Jolie’s latest movie, “A Mighty Heart”, due out June 22. 

I usually don’t like giving myself publicity.  But this one is too cool to pass up. 

I'm not exactly a co-star.  Not even close.  I ended up with one scene that lasted about 5-6 minutes but that I believe has been cut down to where you can't even tell we're in the same room together.  I play the role of a network reporter (based on true events) conducting the first interview with Mariane Pearl (Jolie) after her husband, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, was brutally murdered by terrorists in Pakistan. 

99% of the movie was shot in India.  But two scenes, including this one, were shot here in Austin.

While I'm disappointed at events that transpired during the film's debut last week in which Jolie and her people erected several road blocks for media trying to cover it, she was as professional as they come during our scene.  We filmed in a downtown hotel for about four hours in February.  Not only did we shoot the scene several times, but in between takes, Jolie and I huddled with the director to figure out how to make it flow more smoothly.  That might have been the proudest moment of my acting debut - that my ideas were taken seriously.

To say I was acting is a stretch.  I did my job.  I asked questions playing a reporter.  The end of the scene had more of what I call acting.  We ad libbed quite a bit the part where I ask her if she's seen the video of her husband's death, and she gets mad and storms out with me trying to apologize.

Very cool experience, especially considering that the film is about an important historic event.  I don't think I'm the fiction type.  And if you see it, please go easy on me.  By the way... I wouldn't be caught dead in what they made me wear.