Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Names and faces
■ Kristen Stewart’s directing ambitions go all the way back to when she was an 11-year-old performing in the 2002
David Fincher thriller Panic Room, she said in an interview at the Cannes Film Festival. “I was working with Jodie Foster and I was like, ‘I’m going to direct. I’m going to be the youngest director that like exists,’” Stewart recalled. It took longer than Stewart expected, but she has now made a short film titled Come
Swim that, after debuting at Sundance, she has taken to Cannes. It announces her filmmaking ambitions and opens a new chapter in the career of the 27-year-old actress. Stewart is already developing several other projects and plans to turn Come Swim into a feature-length film. When she told Foster that she was finally making something, Stewart said, “She was like, ‘Dude, the first thing you’re going to realize is that you have nothing to learn.’” Come Swim, which will later debut on the women’s website Refinery 29, isn’t your standard actor-made directorial debut. It’s a 17-minute metaphorical rendering of a feeling, of the overwhelming oppression of heartbreak and grief. A man is submerged, literally, by water everywhere. Stewart describes the film as about “aggrandized pain” and says its imagery has haunted her for four years. “You don’t realize when you’re trudging through that water, you feel so alone,” Stewart said. “We’ve all been there. But when you’re in it, you feel like you can’t participate in life.” For an actress who remains a considerable box-office draw, her film is little concerned with matching audience expectations. Right now, she’s trying to carve our more time for directing — a challenge for a performer drawn to independent productions. “I mean I love acting, too, though. Like I don’t want to trade one for the other.” Stewart said. Making Come Swim, she said, is the most fun she’s had on a set. “I look at it and it’s its own thing and it’s like, ‘I’m so proud of it,’” Stewart said. “It’s not even like I’m proud of myself. I’m proud of it.”
■ Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, spent a day hiking around Mount Katahdin in Maine and talking with residents on their anniversary weekend. Zuckerberg said they met Saturday with former mill workers, teachers, small-business owners, a librarian and a trucker in the town of Millinocket. He said in a Facebook post that he was struck by their commitment to rebuild their community after the closing of paper mills that once drove the town’s economy. Zuckerberg has been traveling the country with a goal of visiting all 50 states. He and his wife were in Bangor for their fifth wedding anniversary Friday before continuing north to the Katahdin region. He posted a photo of his wife sporting a “Got Moose?” baseball cap.