CS Video: Norman’s Joseph Cedar and Richard Gere

Richard Gere plays the title role in Joseph Cedar’s Norman, in theaters Friday

This Friday, Richard Gere is back on the big screen, playing the title role in writer and director Joseph Cedar’s clever, character-driven comedy-drama Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer. Cedar, whose past films have included the acclaimed Israeli features Beaufort and Footnote, recently joined his leading man for a conversation with ComingSoon.net. In the player below, you can watch as Cedar and Gere take you behind the scenes of Norman and explain why it’s quite a bit different than you might expect.

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Norman Oppenheimer (Gere) lives a lonely life in the margins of New York City power and money, a would-be operator dreaming up financial schemes that never come to fruition. As he has nothing real to offer, Norman strives to be everyone’s friend, but his incessant networking leads him nowhere. Always on the lookout for someone willing to pay attention to him, Norman sets his sights on Micha Eshel (Lior Ashkenazi), a charismatic Israeli politician alone in New York at a low point in his career. Sensing Eshel’s vulnerability, Norman reaches out with a gift of a very expensive pair of shoes, a gesture that deeply touches Eshel. When Eshel becomes Prime Minister three years later, he remembers. With his very real connection to the leader of a major nation, Norman is awash in the respect he has always craved. Flush with his newfound feeling of success, Norman attempts to use Eshel’s name to leverage his biggest deal ever: a series of quid pro quo transactions linking the Prime Minister to Norman’s nephew (Michael Sheen), a rabbi (Steve Buscemi), a mogul (Harris Yulin), his assistant (Dan Stevens), and a treasury official from the Ivory Coast. Norman’s kaleidoscopic plans soon go awry, creating the potential for an international catastrophe he must struggle to prevent.

A Sony Pictures Classics release, Norman also stars Charlotte Gainsbourg, Hank Azaria and Josh Charles. Catch it in theaters in New York and Los Angeles this Friday, April 14.