HUFFINGTON
06.17.12
KRISTEN MURPHY / GETTY IMAGES
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prosthetic nose, yanked it
back out. As payback, Rudin
sent the struggling ex-smoker
a crate of cigarettes.
“I was there for that,”
Knudsen says. “Contrary to
the rumors, the note said
‘Thank you,’ not, like, ‘Fuck
you, die.’”
The contest for Best Picture, he adds, “was between
The Hours and Chicago, and
all of a sudden The Pianist
came from nowhere and took
all the momentum. And it was
like, ‘OK, no point in spending
more money.’” (Nicole Kidman went on to win Best Actress for her portrayal of Vir-
ginia Woolf in The Hours.)
Having a front-row seat
at the Oscar knife fight was
amusing enough, but what
Knudsen really craved was
experience on the set of a
movie. He got it in 2003,
when Jonathan Demme’s
remake of The Manchurian
Candidate came to New York.
Rudin, who produced the
film, granted Knudsen’s request for a job as assistant
production coordinator.
“I know that the production manager and coordinator
were not happy about that at
all, because I sort of became
this ‘must hire,’” Knudsen
Lars Knudsen
and Jay Van
Hoy attend
the Producers
Luncheon at
the Sundance
House during the
2011 Sundance
Film Festival on
January 23, 2011
in Park City, Utah.