It’s (Armie) Hammer time
EVEN Mongolian periodicals are evangelizing Armie Hammer and Timothée Chalamet’s movie “Call Me by Your Name.” Chalamet’s young, good-looking. Armie’s older, taller (6-foot-5), and handsome enough for an underwear ad.
This story of two males in love has shots of nudity. Says Armie, greatgrandson of the late industrialist Armand Hammer, who owned a lot of stock in products known as Arm & Hammer: “I studied at Stella Adler’s. My first screen test was long ago. Some in our classy family were possibly rightfully hesitant at my becoming an actor.
“Then, of course, comes this role. I’m married, straight, have two kids. The part was a little dicey.”
Tieless, jacketless, he says: “We shot in Crema, a little town in Northern Italy. One special scene you might look for: I eat a peach.” (It’s après sex.) He paused. Unsure what to then ask, my next question was, “Was it juicy?”
Smiled Armie: “At least it was . . . afterward.”
Timothée, also the heartthrob in director Greta Gerwig’s film “Lady Bird”: “I started doing commercials at 11 and took acting lessons in my La Guardia High School.
“But my whole family’s in the business. I love making movies. I have a passion for the theater. My grandfather was a screen- writer, my mother’s an actress, my uncle’s a director, my aunt’s a screenwriter. I already know a lot of people in my life.” James Ivory, of Merchant Ivory Productions’ ’80s and ’90s award-winning movies such as “Howards End” and “A Room With a View” wrote the script. “I was familiar with the original 2007 book. They couldn’t at first get a director so when they asked me to write this, I said yes. But I said, ‘I want to write my own script.’ Took me a year to do. “Everyone I knew has gone. It’s sad. Even our Merchant and Ivory library is now owned by Charles Cohen’s Cohen Media. But I’m still doing things.”